


Falls the Shadow

by littlesystems



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Bedelia as Will's psychiatrist, Breathplay, Canon timeline butchered and stripped for parts, Canon-Typical Cannibalism, Canon-typical descriptions of crime scenes, Hannibal Lecter is a Cannibal, Illness, M/M, Manipulation, Matchmaking, Mentions of Cancer, Mildly Dubious Consent, Morally Grey Will Graham, Oral Sex, POV switch, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-02-23 11:01:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 72,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23577121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlesystems/pseuds/littlesystems
Summary: "You're a psychiatrist," Will says. "Between your personal and professional lives you must have met thousands of people, you must know dozens of different flavors of pathology. Do you know anyone who would take me as I am? Who would be able to love me," he gestures in a sweeping motion, from his messy hair to his stained knee, "just as I am?""I do."Bedelia's words shock Will into stillness.“Really?”AKA an AU where Bedelia is Will’s psychiatrist instead of Hannibal, Will makes a series of increasingly questionable life choices, and no one should ever take Bedelia’s advice. Ever.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 293
Kudos: 2140





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title and poetry excerpt from The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot.

_Between the idea  
_ _And the reality  
_ _Between the motion_  
_And the act  
Falls the Shadow_

Will sits across from his psychiatrist on a dismally sunny Wednesday afternoon. No matter where Will shifts, or how he angles his body, the sun reflects off of the table, or the flower arrangement's vase, or his own watch, and gleams directly into his eyes. 

The shine is giving him a headache. 

The shine is giving him a headache, and he already has so many words swirling around in his head that he doesn't know where to start. _How_ to start. And every time he shifts, the damn reflection stabs him in the eyes, and he's not sure how he can be expected to gather his thoughts into an orderly sequence when he can't even look around the room without wanting to just go home and lay down in the dark and save himself the trouble of having to _look_ at anything.

It doesn't help, either, that his collar feels too tight. It shouldn't. It really shouldn't -- the shirt is baggy, doesn't fit quite right, and hangs a little loose around his waist, his shoulders. He picked this shirt because it's comfortable -- he picks nearly all of his clothes because they're comfortable -- but truthfully _nothing_ could be comfortable right now, because it's Will's own skin that's the problem.

Really, it's Will's _brain_ that's the problem. 

Will finally gives up looking around the room, since there's no safe haven to be found, and allows his gaze to drop to his lap. The concession feels a little bit like failure. His unwillingness to look at the other person in the room also feels like failure. He's gotten better, at that, on his good days.

This is not one of his good days.

And there truly _is_ no safe haven to be found, no safe place to look, because ten seconds of staring blankly down brings the realization that the right knee of his pants is stained with blood. The pants are brown, and the blood is brown, so it's not _obvious_ to the casual observer, but it's definitely -- there. It's definitely blood. Probably from kneeling down at a crime scene. 

Will should probably throw these pants away.

Will should probably have actually looked in the mirror before leaving the house, but instead he pulled clothes on blindly and left, unwilling to see himself the way that others see him. The messy hair. The baggy clothes. The dark circles.

He's a damn adult man wearing stained, baggy clothes, like a skinny child in a boat yard.

It's no wonder that --

Well. It's no wonder.

Will can't blame others for being able to _see_ him. He doesn't even try to pass as normal. He doesn't even _try._

_Why doesn't he try?_

"Are we going to spend the whole hour in silence?"

Dr. Du Maurier's tone betrays nothing, but she might be annoyed.

Will shrugs, doesn't look at her. Stares, instead, at the blotchy pattern on his knee.

She says nothing further, but the damage is done -- the silence, once broken, holds no solace.

"There's blood on these pants."

Silence, again. Will didn't give her much to work with. He can hear her future _and how does that make you feel?_ clear as a bell, and twice as useless. So, he preempts.

"Do I come here with bloodstained clothes often?"

A pause, considering.

"Sometimes."

"You never say anything."

In fact, Will doesn't think Bedelia has ever spoken to him about his appearance, outside of when he was ravaged with fever. But that was a doctor's concern, not an aesthetic one.

"Should I have?"

Will shrugs, again. 

"I don't know, should you? I'm here so that I can learn to pass as normal, right? So, dressing in bloodstained clothes isn't normal."

"You're here," she says, "so that you have a safe harbor from the tumultuousness of your thoughts. A sense of stability, in your line of work. Do you feel like you are only pretending?"

Will frowns. "I'm not normal, and I'm never going to _be_ normal, so any attempt feels like pretending."

"And you are," she says, "concerned, with appearing normal."

"I'm too old to be dressing like this."

Silence stretches, out, and out, and out.

"I could take a guess," she says, "but this conversation will probably be more beneficial, if you tell me what brought about this line of thinking."

Will pulls his glasses off, rubs his eyes.

"I kissed Alana."

"I assume, based on your behavior, that it went poorly."

Will laughs humorlessly.

"You could say that."

"And how does that make you feel?"

Will squeezes his eyes shut, taking one last second to enjoy the darkness, before he looks up and glances in Bedelia's general direction.

"You know how that makes me feel."

Romantic rejection should be the simplest, most straightforward problem that Will has ever brought to her.

"You came into my office, sat in silence for fifteen minutes, and then started talking about your wardrobe. You have said nothing about heartbreak, or rejection. So stop pretending that you are exactly like everyone else, and try that again. How does it make you feel?"

"Inadequate. Sloppy." Will thinks back, over the last few hours. "...Unstable."

"Do you feel unstable?" Bedelia asks. "Or do you feel like others view you as unstable?"

Will pauses, to give the question the consideration that it deserves.

"I feel like others view me as unstable, and that makes me _feel_ unstable. I can see myself, through their eyes, and it makes me feel like I'm... I'm in a funhouse mirror. Like I'm hollow, and they're filling me up with their expectations. With their... interpretation, of me, instead of who I am."

"So Alana views you as unstable, and your actions -- or, at least, your emotions -- mirror that expectation."

"Yeah."

"And that line of thinking made you critical of other elements of your life, such as your wardrobe."

"I... guess." 

Will turns away, and fixes his gaze on the flower arrangement sitting off to his left. It's something tall, spindly, with delicate white flowers. 

"It's not really about Alana," he continues. "It's... everything. It's every woman I've ever dated, every relationship that ended well before it could be called serious. It's every woman I've gone on one or two dates with, before they let me down easy. Not just the ones that reject me outright, like Alana."

"A lifetime of failed relationships," Bedelia says.

Bedelia doesn't sugar-coat anything. That's something that Will hates and likes about her in equal measure.

"Yeah. And it's not them -- it's me. I know that it is, I don't blame them," he says, "I don't blame Alana. I knew that it would end up this way."

"And yet you chose to act anyway."

"'Chose' is a strong word. It just -- happened. I don't know, I wasn't thinking."

"Events don't 'just happen.' This is an action you chose to do, whether or not you gave it advanced consideration."

"Oh, I gave it plenty of advanced consideration. I knew it would end badly, I just did it anyway."

Bedelia doesn't respond. She could say _then why did you do it?_ or something like _this fits into a larger self-destructive pattern, Mr. Graham,_ but she doesn't have to. She allows her silence to do the job for her, until Will sighs and continues.

"Alana used to never allow herself to be in a room alone with me. She thought that I wouldn't notice that, but I did. From the beginning. But we've been working together a lot more, since I started working for Jack, and there's this... sexual tension, there. I'm not imagining that."

"But you still did not get the impression that she would be receptive to your advances."

"I got tired of waiting. Wondering, if anything would happen. I didn't think it would, but I wanted... confirmation, I guess." _Shit or get off the pot,_ as Will's dad would have said, but he doesn't say that to Bedelia. 

"You got tired of lingering in the doorway. You wanted to either cross the threshold or slam the door closed. You wanted finality."

"Yes."

The metaphor is a very simplistic facsimile of Will's real problem, but Bedelia knows that, and Will knows that she knows. She's been working with him for long enough that he sometimes feels like she knows him better than he knows himself.

"It's not just me, in the doorway," he says. "It's me, and a shadow of me."

"You, and her interpretation of you."

"I am…." Will toys with a couple of different descriptors, lingering over the taste of them. "...Damaged. And most women have a sixth sense for that kind of thing. I can't blame them, for wanting to stay away from it."

They look at Will and they just _know._ He sometimes makes eye contact with a politely-smiling woman and he can feel the shadow of himself splinter into thousand pieces in her gaze, and it makes him feel like his body is breaking apart to match. Like he could look down at his hands and find them drifting away from his arms -- his body split at the joints, a dismembered corpse. 

"Women have been socialized to be attentive to the needs of men. You're unlikely to date a woman who is unaware of your not-insignificant emotional needs."

"They can see it on me from a mile away," he says wryly, "like an ugly hat." A shambling pile of limbs, stitched together into the image of a man. Grotesque. "Sometimes, I want to be anyone other than who I am. Sometimes, alone, in the dark, I'm afraid that I am... fundamentally unlovable."

Sometimes, Will is afraid that they're right. That these strangers see something in him, deeply sown, that Will is merely in denial about. That he truly _is_ a cobbled patchwork of the monsters that he hunts -- that they don't just see a false image of him, but the _truth_ of him.

Bedelia cocks her head.

"Don't look at me like that."

"And how am I looking at you?" 

Will doesn't bother answering -- she's merely pointing out that he hasn't actually looked at her once this appointment. Her gaze crawls across his skin, assessing. Patient. 

"Would you date someone like me, Dr. Du Maurier?"

"No," she says. "I would not. But that says more about who I am, than who you are."

"Sure, that's what all the women probably say about me."

"You're not interested in my love life, Mr. Graham. You've spoken in greater detail about your personal life than you typically do, and so you're feeling defensive. You're deflecting."

Will frowns and picks at the blood on his knee instead of responding.

"Do you actually desire a romantic relationship?" she asks. "Or do you feel like pursuing one is what a 'normal' person would do?"

Will thinks about her question. Thinks about the gnawing pit of loneliness that chews on him in the night, about the bone-deep ache of constantly understanding but not being understood. 

"I share my mind with killers and psychopaths. It would be... nice, to come home to something better than that." Instead Will has a house full of dogs. Dogs are much, much easier than people. "But that never seems to work out for me, so."

"Perhaps," Bedelia says, considering, "you're chasing after the wrong women."

Will laughs.

"That has been a recurring theme my entire life." Every woman is the wrong woman, in his experience. "It's not them, it's me."

Bedelia's silence turns sharp. She doesn't allow pointless self-deprecation in her office.

"You are," she says slowly, "attracted, to people who are not attracted to you in return."

"I'm attracted to unattainable people as a defense mechanism," Will rattles off, "as a preemptive response to dealing with rejection. That way, when I am ultimately rejected, some part of me knows that I never really put myself out there, and therefore have not truly failed." His words are rote, prescriptive -- he's heard them, almost verbatim, from multiple therapists over the years. No one can claim that Will doesn't know his own issues.

"You may have received that assessment before, but that's not actually what I meant."

"What did you mean, then?"

Bedelia looks him over for a few seconds, considering, gathering her thoughts. She doesn't start speaking without knowing how her sentence will end, like Will often does. 

"You dislike yourself," she says. "You blame your instability, or the perception of your instability, for your inability to begin and maintain relationships. But the real problem lies in your vulnerability -- that which you most dislike about yourself. You find your vulnerability repulsive, and in turn you're only attracted to others who find your vulnerability equally repulsive. This is ultimately what prevents you from making intimate connections."

Will blinks, taken aback.

"Take Dr. Bloom, as an example," Bedelia continues, not giving Will time to gather his thoughts. "I have met her on several occasions and I know her in a professional capacity, though I do not know her personally. I can see why you are attracted to her -- she has a strength of character that you admire, because it is what you yourself lack. She has conviction, and confidence, and is always firm in the knowledge that she is doing what she believes is right. She shies away from vulnerability, and instability, because she sees such people as ones that she has a duty and a capacity to help.”

"She sees me as a patient."

"Perhaps. More importantly, she does not see you as a potential romantic partner. And yet that is what you like about her."

Will takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes again -- just because he knows it's a nervous tick doesn't stop him from doing it. 

"So what's the solution here, Dr. Du Maurier? I bow to your infinite wisdom."

Will feels -- stung. _Seen._ Sometimes Bedelia doles out therapy with a scalpel, slicing straight through muscle and flesh without a second thought, without warning. 

"There are many people who do not find vulnerability repulsive. Some, who find vulnerability attractive."

The thought is viscerally unappealing.

"So you're saying I should go out there and find myself a predator?"

Bedelia stares at him, silent, and cutting, for an uncomfortably long moment. 

"It is telling, that you see a desire to comfort the vulnerable as a predatory action, instead of a nurturing one."

Will has seen too many vulnerable people in shallow graves, dumpsters, floating face-down in rivers or left face-up in the grass.

"But perhaps," she says, "the better question is: do you see yourself as prey?"

Will shrugs, jerky and unsure. 

"Sometimes, I guess." He looks back at the floral arrangement, looking for somewhere safe to land. "You said that you wouldn't date someone like me."

He's not sure why he said that. 

He probably shouldn't have said that.

"You've had a preoccupation with my personal life today, Mr. Graham."

The sun is very, very bright, and under the magnifying glass, Will is starting to burn. 

"I'm not attracted to you."

"Do you view me as a predator?"

"I..." How could he explain to her, the strange way he conceptualizes her? That her mind is like a cool, solid surface, one that he could bounce his ideas off of without the risk of shattering glass?

"You and I are opposites in many ways. And yet I am the first therapist that you have managed to work with for more than a few weeks. Have you ever considered that your earlier therapists have had a vulnerability that made you feel uncomfortable?"

"People are like mirrors, most of the time. When I look at them... it's like I become them, for a little while. Even my therapists."

Working with therapists, or psychiatrists, or psychologists, is always so _distracting._ They worry about their marriages, or their children, or their student loans or their handsy coworkers, their sleepless nights and their lonely beds. They would try their best to coach Will through his issues, but Will could hardly even think about himself in the face of the maelstrom of their emotions.

But not Bedelia.

"But not me."

"You're more like..." Will grapples with the words. Other people are so clear-cut to him -- he has such an instantaneous ability to understand other people's motives -- that it seems laborious to have to explain his own. "...like the frozen surface of a lake. There's a reflection there, if I look hard enough, but it's... it's easy to ignore. Muted. Throwing my thoughts out into the world sometimes feels like punching a mirror. I have to worry about broken pieces of glass getting under my skin."

"But you can jump up and down on the frozen surface of a lake, and if the ice is thick enough, you'll never be able to crack it."

"Yeah."

Silence stretches out, cool and glassy.

"That probably means you're a psychopath."

"Perhaps."

Will has always liked that about her -- that he can call her a psychopath to her face, and she won't get angry or defensive.

"But you don't have any difficulty connecting with psychopaths, do you Mr. Graham?"

Will shakes his head.

"So, you believe that anyone who could be attracted to your vulnerabilities would have to be a predator," she says, dragging the conversation back on-topic.

"I work with predators every day. I know how they view the weak."

"Vulnerable is not synonymous with weak. And, you work with criminals every day. There is an important distinction."

"Is there?"

"If Dr. Bloom started dating someone who you viewed as vulnerable, would you view her as a predator?"

Will taps his fingers against the arm of the chair, considering.

"No."

"Why not? She would be, by your definition."

"That's... different."

This conversation has traveled far and away from anywhere Will thought it would go. He assumed he would bitch about rejection, Bedelia would tell him to either 'put himself out there' or to work more on making himself into a better, realer person, and Will would walk away from the conversation as unsatisfied as he has been every other time he's talked about his love life with a therapist. He should have known that Bedelia wouldn't respond like all his other therapists -- she never does.

"Often people with strong personalities are attracted to others with strong personalities. Sometimes, they are attracted to those who are more vulnerable than themselves. While some see such relationships as an opportunity to manipulate or to subjugate another, some view it as an opportunity to protect. They desire being relied upon, rather than simply co-existing. There is a pathology behind that desire, just as there is a pathology behind yours, but that does not make them inherently predatory any more than it makes you prey. You have agency, Mr. Graham, if you choose to utilize it."

The restless energy becomes too much for Will -- he stands up and paces around the room, a burning effigy of himself. 

"Yeah, maybe you're right. But come on. I'm a mess -- you _know_ I'm a mess."

"Perhaps you need to find yourself another frozen-over lake, one that can bear your weight no matter how hard you jump."

Will laughs, a mirthless sound that could only generously be described as a laugh in the first place.

"You're a psychiatrist," Will says. "Between your personal and professional lives you must have met thousands of people, you must know dozens of different flavors of pathology. Do you know _anyone_ who would take me as I am? Who would be able to love me," he gestures in a sweeping motion, from his messy hair to his stained knee, "just as I am?"

"I do."

Bedelia's words shock Will into stillness.

"Really?" he says, fixing his gaze on her shoes, strung somewhere between doubtful and incredulous. The thing is, Bedelia is not and has never been a liar, and would not tell untruths in the name of comfort. 

"Yes, really."

"Who?"

"Doctor-patient confidentiality, Mr. Graham."

"So it's one of your patients?"

"Yes."

"Tell me about her," Will says, lifting his gaze to her chin. 

Bedelia just raises a delicate eyebrow in response. Will considers himself: disheveled, frozen mid-pace, barking demands. He grins, telegraphing sheepishness. Crosses the room and sits back in his chair like a good little patient.

"You don't have to give me a name, or a profession," he says, regulating his tone into something normal even while his mind is shrieking for answers. "I want to know -- if this is someone you could really see me dating, or _marrying,_ I want to know something about them. Because I can't picture... anything." Will runs a hand through his hair, frustrated. "I look into my future and I see a -- an amorphous blob. Like a shadow of a shadow, reflected in a thousand mirrors. I can't see anything. I can't see _anyone._ So if you think you've actually met someone who can handle me, then by all means, tell me what that looks like."

Bedelia leans back in her chair, ever-so-slightly, and makes a show of considering him.

"Why not tell me? What do I have to lose?"

"My concern is that you will become," she says, "fixated, on a person you have never met, and are unlikely to meet in the wild. So to speak."

Will can't help but grin a little, at that. 

"So to speak."

Will allows his gaze to meet hers, briefly. Testing the ice. He puts on his best boy-scout face -- the face he uses on the rare occasions that he has to charm a witness, or when he's trying to get the last blueberry muffin at the commissary that he knows Roberta has saved in the back for her good-for-nothing nephew that's too busy being a hot-shot agent to come see her.

"And if I promise not to become fixated?" Will asks, all charm. Or, at least, as much charm as he can manage.

Bedelia sighs, a barely-perceptible huff of air, and Will knows that he's won.

"He's not anyone you would interact with willingly. In fact, you would probably dislike him on sight."

Will laughs. "Off to a good start."

"He's educated. Well-traveled. To say that he cooks like a chef would perhaps be disingenuous -- he views cooking as an art form, on par with the opera, or painting, and he is quite accomplished at it. In addition to cooking, he's a skilled artist, plays several instruments, and speaks half a dozen languages."

Will starts building a mental picture, filling in each little detail.

"Sounds... intimidating."

"He can be. He has little patience for rudeness or boorish behavior, and while he has many hangers-on, he tends to keep people at arm's length. He has a difficult time connecting with people on a more personal level." She pauses, gauging Will's reaction. "He's also a Count."

"Of course he is." The guy sounds like he's far, far out of Will league. _Unlikely to meet in the wild._ No kidding. Will has a hard time believing that Bedelia really thinks _this guy_ would be 'the one' for Will. Maybe she's just fucking with him. "Right," he says, gathering his thoughts. "So what is it about this guy? Because it sounds like he probably has a line a mile long of people who would cut off their own hand to marry him, so why would he be interested in me?"

"He wants to be known," Bedelia says. "People see him and they see money, and privilege, and the opportunity to live a very comfortable life, but they do not see him."

"He wants to be seen."

"He lost his parents when he was very young. His sister, soon after. He was raised in orphanages and boarding schools, dragged around Europe like baggage. So yes, he wants someone who will be able to see him behind his masks; someone who will meet him beyond the veil. But it's also important that he finds someone that he can take care of, in the way he was never able to take care of his younger sister. He also needs someone who, once committed, would never, ever leave him." Bedelia pauses. She pauses for long enough that Will thinks she's done, but then she speaks again. "He likes to think of himself as impenetrable," she says, "and, as far as romance goes, I believe that he believes that he's above such things. But given his other habits... well. I can say that, once he sets his sights on something, he pursues it with the single-minded determination of a man possessed. I do not believe he would handle heartbreak well. And I think he knows that, which is one of the reasons why he avoids being put in such a position."

Will slots those details into his mental picture of the man. Not _quite_ enough to feel like he really knows this guy -- this _Count, Jesus Christ_ \-- but enough to work with.

"So, he wants to be seen, but he's afraid that if he lets people look, they won't like the real him."

"Afraid is the wrong word."

Bedelia says nothing else. Instead of elaborating, she settles into her chair and cocks her head, wordlessly turning the conversation over to Will.

"No," Will says, gathering all the threads together and weaving them into a picture, "afraid isn't right. Guy like that is... educated. Very intelligent. Talented. He would take pride in his accomplishments." _I believe that he believes that he's above such things,_ she had said. "He has better things to do with his time than to... debase himself, in trying to be known, or seen, or loved. Why bother? Most of the people he socializes with probably _think_ they're smarter than they actually are. They think they're more _interesting_ than they actually are." He socializes with them for his own entertainment -- not to make connections. Not to be seen. "He doesn't actually want to be seen, does he? Part of him, maybe, any human does, but... he's not looking for it. Or... he doesn't think that he'll find it. So he doesn't look."

"Something like that."

It would be great if Bedelia would say something more descriptive, but she may have exhausted her usefulness. She's been more forthcoming than normal -- Will should have expected that at some point she would leave the conversation up to him. Guessing. 

"So is this one of those _he was blue and so was she_ things?" he asks, not quite sure how else to describe it.

"I'm afraid I don't know that reference."

Maybe she does, or maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she just wants him to explain.

Will rubs his eyes. "You know, those children's poems. It’s about masks. You hide who you really are, and then when you meet someone else just like you, you never realize. Not that I think I’m just like him, because…” Will gestures to his _everything_ again, “...clearly I’m not. But more generally.”

“What do you think?”

“I think that I don’t know him,” Will says simply. “I’m just guessing.” He pauses and thinks over the other breadcrumbs that she left him, knowing that there’s more to the picture. If he was done, she would have changed the subject by now. If she’s waiting, it’s because he has something further she wants him to realize, or to think about. “You said you didn’t think I would like him. Is that because he’s a man?”

“No. While I imagine you consider yourself straight, with the way that your mind works, individual people and individual minds are far more influential in your attraction than appearance or gender.”

A hint of a smile curls around her lips, and he can see her amusement taking form -- a shady reflection across the surface of the frozen lake. _You would probably dislike him on sight._

“He’s a psychiatrist,” Will says. It’s not a question -- he knows. An amused Bedelia is often a cruel Bedelia, and he can’t think of anything that would entertain her quite so much. Will can’t think of any profession he would want to date _less._ Psychiatrist is one step above serial killer, particularly if this doctor is one who does research and publishes in journals. 

“So what, he would be… drawn to me, by my instability, and then would get interested in my _pathology,_ and then if he stuck around for long enough you think he might want to date me?”

Bedelia stands and walks over to her desk. “No,” she says, flipping to the next page in her appointment book. “He would be drawn to you, because I think he would find you beautiful. And I think he would find your vulnerability… attractive. And then I think that as he got to know you, he would very quickly realize that you’re more… interesting, than you seem on the surface.”

“Thanks,” Will mutters.

“You are not a victim of circumstance, Will. You have agency, if you choose to use it.”

A glance at the clock tells Will that his hour is up, and that means this conversation is over. 

“You think he could… handle me.”

“I know that he could. It’s only a question of whether you would allow him to.”

__________

Will thinks about Bedelia’s patient. He thinks about the man while letting his dogs out, while tying flies, while cooking himself dinner. 

The man wouldn’t quite fit into Will’s life, not with how Will lives now. 

Would he look down on Will’s threadbare house? What would he read into Will’s pack of strays? A psychiatrist would easily be able to see through Will’s loneliness, his inability to make human connections. Would that turn him away?

Bedelia doesn’t seem to think so.

Does Will even want to date a man who would be interested in Will for his broken mind? Does Will even want to date a _man?_

Will thinks about it while flying to Ohio for a case. He thinks about it while looking at broken bodies, at sobbing loved ones. He thinks about it while Jack barks out instructions and while Will follows them without question.

Will thinks about it when he gets home, wrung out and hollow. He sits on his living room floor, surrounded by dogs that are happy to see him, and he imagines his home infused with the scents of cooking, imagines a man stepping out his kitchen with a home cooked meal and a relieved smile. 

Will imagines having someone to confide in. Not like Bedelia -- not like a therapist -- but someone Will can talk to in the dark of the night, when he wakes from nightmares or is unable to fall asleep from fear of them. Someone who won’t judge him. Someone who will hold him, regardless of what kind of monsters Will has been hunting. 

Regardless of what kind of monsters Will has been becoming.

Will imagines.

__________

"I have no intention of introducing you," Bedelia says, "so your best course of action is to forget about it."

"You were the one that told me about him," Will says sullenly, sprawled out in the chair like a petulant child. 

Bedelia gives him a sharp look.

"That was intended to be a hypothetical example, exclusively for the purpose of interrupting a self-deprecating spiral. An inspiration, _not_ an invitation."

Will taps his fingertips against the arm of his chair, considering whether or not it would be productive to sit up properly and stop annoying Bedelia. Because she _is_ annoyed, though she covers it well. Tension hovers around her mouth, and her posture is just a _little_ too rigid -- differing from her norm. Her body language says that she's ready to put Will in his place. 

"But -"

"Enough."

Will intends to argue. Truly, he does. But he gets distracted by ice crystals blooming delicately beneath Bedelia's fingertips. The fractals are mesmerizing -- they look like the stars of frost that crackle across car windshields, when the temperature and humidity are _just_ right. They're beautiful. Perhaps dangerous.

"How frequent are your visual hallucinations?" Bedelia asks, breaking the trance-like state Will had fallen into. He snaps his eyes up to hers, briefly, and then down to her hands again, pink and warm with no ice in sight. He's not sure how long he was staring, but clearly long enough for her to notice. 

"Rare."

The tilt of her head says she doesn't believe him.

"Mr. Graham..."

"They're not frightening," he amends, "not anymore. They're...." Will looks out the window and tries to gather his thoughts, tries to put the way he sees the world into words. "They're more like a warning. Sometimes my mind knows things before my conscious thoughts understand them." Outside, the sky looms heavy with rain. "I see Garret Jacob Hobbs when I'm searching for killers. I see a stag, sometimes. Little things."

A crow streaks across the sky carrying something in its beak. 

"And what did you see just now?"

"Nothing."

Another crow follows behind the first, then another, and another. Bedelia doesn't acknowledge Will's obvious lie with a response.

"Ice," he says, after the pause grows weighty and cold. "Blooming."

"Across a frozen lake?"

Will lifts one shoulder in a shrug. 

"Nothing so literal." Will glances back at Bedelia, but her face gives nothing away. "Does that make me crazy?"

The question is flippant. They both know what kind of crazy he is.

"When I first met you, your brain was half-cooked and you were out of your mind with fever." 

Will barely remembers those dark days. Just the heat, and the terror, and the never-ending nightmare of killers and fear and _heat heat heat._

"You're lucky," Bedelia continues. "If the encephalitis had gone untreated for much longer, you could have died from it."

In his defense, Will _had_ gone to a neurologist. The headaches were one thing -- the sleepwalking and the vivid, terrifying hallucinations were something else entirely. But Will's neurologist had made some kind of clerical error, and switched his brain scans with those of a healthy man. Will had been given a bottle of aspirin and a referral to a psychiatrist -- Bedelia -- to treat his "mental illness." 

She had taken one look at Will's sweaty face and asked him to draw a clock. Then she marched him straight back to the hospital for a second opinion. 

"Your brain is an organ, just like any other. A person who has suffered from stomach ulcers will likely have digestive problems for years after the problem has been solved. Broken bones can cause phantom pains decades after they have healed." She pauses, tilts her head. "Your brain had to adjust to a new normal."

Will snorts. "So I can expect these to last forever, is what you're saying."

"Not necessarily. But their existence is not without precedent. And, as long as you're able to distinguish between fantasy and reality, they need not be cause for alarm."

"They don't alarm me." It's a true statement. These days, Will's visions are actually more helpful than harmful.

Bedelia leans back in her chair, assessing.

"Tell me about how you fared on your latest case.”

Outside, two dozen crows dot the power lines.

__________

Will wakes in the middle of the night, heart pounding. He can still feel the dark water rushing around him, surrounding him, clawing _inside_ him. Rubbing a hand over his face, he glances at the clock -- 2:34 -- and then at the empty space beside him. 

It’s empty, of course.

It’s always empty. 

__________

"No."

Will tears his eyes away from Bedelia's new flower arrangement -- foxgloves and black hellebores, artfully arranged in a matte white, angular vase -- to land on the bridge of her nose.

"I haven't even said anything."

"You were going to ask me," she says, "about my patient."

She's right. Will had been working up the nerve to ask her about the man, _again,_ even though he knows better by now. Will won't lie to her -- no point in that -- but he has no interest in confirming, so he turns his eyes back to the floral arrangement. Is there supposed to be a message in the flowers, he wonders. He doubts that Bedelia would do something so whimsical, but then again, Will doesn’t know her. Not really. The less he knows about her, the less he understands her -- and the less he understands her, the better she can understand him.

Maybe he'll pick up a book on flowers for his own private amusement. Will can pretend she's sending secret messages, even though he thinks he knows her better than that. 

"I'm a doctor, not a match-maker."

Will snorts, but turns his attention back to her. 

"You never struck me as a trekkie." 

"You don't want to know about my personal life," Bedelia reminds him. 

She's right. He doesn't. 

"And you only ever bring up my personal life when you're deflecting."

Big, puffy white clouds drift across the sky. Picturesque. It's light, dark, light, dark, as they're buffeted by the wind, rolling in front of the sun and then dancing away again.

"Will."

"I don't know what you want me to say," he says, eyes still firmly out the window. "I'm dwelling on my sadness and my loneliness and I try to fill the hole in my heart with a pack of strays, but they can't love me like a human can, so..." he says, half-sarcastic. If Bedelia thinks he's being petulant, he can be petulant.

Will doesn't need to be looking at Bedelia to know that she's rolling her eyes.

"Stop surrendering to your fixation."

A shadow rolls across the room. Will rubs his fingertips over the knee of his pants, considering. 

"Maybe I don't want to," he says finally. "Maybe, fixating on the idea of a person is healthier than fixating on murderers." In truth, Will really _has_ spent more time recently thinking about what his life could be like, rather than having nightmares about Garret Jacob Hobbs, even though he's only saying it to annoy Bedelia. "Maybe, imagining a romantic relationship is healthier than imagining crime scenes." Maybe, maybe, maybe. He's irritating her, he knows. She's tiring of his antics, he knows. But what will he get when she finally snaps?

Bedelia sighs audibly. 

"You're surrendering to your social anxiety, and focusing on the phantom idea of a person rather than putting yourself in the position to meet a real human being." She pauses, waiting for his attention. "Will." Humoring her, he turns his gaze in her general direction. "You refuse to meet real people, because real people have the depth and complexity that an idea lacks."

"Obviously."

She waits a beat. She’s considering something, Will can tell. Weighing. 

A shadow rolls across the room, dark. 

"I'm giving you a homework assignment."

Will laughs, slightly incredulous. "I don't want a homework assignment." If she thinks she can distract him that easily, she clearly doesn’t know him as well as she thinks she does. 

"I want you to go to the opera."

Will waits a beat, two, three. 

"What?" 

He makes fleeting eye contact, but Bedelia gives nothing away.

"In Baltimore."

Will frowns. "Why Baltimore?"

The Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts is practically in Will's backyard. If he's going to go do something stupid, at the very least he could do it somewhere he could stumble home afterwards _without_ an hour-plus drive.

"Baltimore is far enough away from Quantico that you should not run into your coworkers." It's true, but somehow her words sound like a lie. "And, it's far enough away from Wolf Trap that you shouldn't run into your neighbors. The point of this exercise is to meet _new_ people, not to spend the night avoiding the people you already know."

Will flicks his eyes up to hers again. There's something she's not saying. Something, something, something. He looks back to the flowers, considering. They’re foxgloves, today. Poisonous. They grow after forest fires, he knows. Over grave sites. They spring forth from change, in recently-turned earth. They can stop your heart if ingested. They're beautiful, but they are dangerous. 

"You want me to go to the opera," he says slowly, trying to tease out whatever Bedelia has planted in between the lines, "in Baltimore, so that I can meet someone new." The room erupts in daylight, as the cloud passes by. 

"Yes."

Will nods, slowly. Considering. Bedelia has never given him homework before -- at least, not like this. _Get at least six hours of sleep before leaving the house tomorrow_ and _tell Jack Crawford that you need downtime between cases_ don’t really count.

_He views cooking as an art form,_ she had said about her patient, _on par with the opera, or painting._

"And you think that this will help me with my... fixation."

"I do," she says, unreadable. "They're premiering a new show on Friday night. There will be a cocktail hour afterwards, which would be the perfect opportunity for you to go outside of your comfort zone."

Will nods, once. "I'll buy tickets, then."

__________

The opera is boring and interesting in equal measure. The costuming and stagecraft are lovingly rendered; the singing, talented; the story, mostly incomprehensible to him.

Will does not speak Italian.

He doubts most of the socialites do, either. Once the show is over they swoop into the lobby for cocktail hour like a flock of birds, chittering and showing off their expensive plumage. They all want to be seen. They all want the others to know how sophisticated they are, how educated, how bourgeoisie. They're peacocking at best, catfishing at worst. The clouds of perfume and jangling of jewels tell a very boring, predictable story. 

Will is bored.

A few people drift by and introduce themselves to Will, trying to get the scoop on the unfamiliar face in their midst. They don't get many newcomers -- snippets of overheard conversation tell him that much. Will nurses his drink and peruses the room with his eyes, wondering if Bedelia was fucking with him. _Go to the opera,_ she said. _You'll meet someone interesting,_ she said. Maybe she thinks that if she annoys him long enough, he'll give up his chase. Maybe she was trying to give him the opportunity to meet people _like_ her patient, without actually sending Will on the path _to_ her patient.

Maybe she was being truthful, and she really did just want him to get out of his house, and was using his current fixation to her advantage. 

Will's suit is a little bit too tight, the lights are a little bit too bright, and he can't have another drink without committing himself to another half an hour of this charade, at least. 

"You have the look of a man contemplating his escape."

Will turns to face the figure that sidled up on his right without Will’s notice. The man is older than Will, tall, wearing a well-cut black suit paired with a flamboyant paisley tie. His English is accented -- European, though Will can't quite place from where. Will had noticed this man weaving expertly through the crowd earlier, greeting people he clearly knew well and holding court in the middle of the room, a dozen or so people fawning over his every word. Whoever he is, he's at the top of this social circle's food chain, and he knows it. 

"That obvious?" Will says wryly. He takes another sip of his drink and tries not to stare at the man too blatantly. Could this be the man he's looking for? He remembers Bedelia’s description of the man -- _while he has many hangers-on, he tends to keep people at arm's length._ He’s European. Cultured. Presumably speaks Italian.

"No," the stranger says. "But I tend to be more observant than most." The man turns to face Will fully, and offers his hand. "Hannibal Lecter."

Will shakes his hand. "Will Graham."

"Forgive my presumption, but are you new in town? I have never seen you here before, and I would not forget a face like yours." 

Hannibal delivers the words without innuendo, so Will can't tell if he's flirting or if he's just an eccentric European.

"Not new in town, no. Just new to the opera. My first time, actually."

"Cultivating new experiences is always a worthwhile endeavor," Hannibal says with an approving nod. "Tell me, Will, what did you think?"

"It was... different." Will is about six layers out of his depth right now, so there's no point in pretending he's sophisticated. Either this man is a random stranger who Will will never speak to again, or he's Bedelia's patient, and either way Will has nothing to gain from pretense. 

"You can be honest," Hannibal says, amused. "I won't be offended if you hated it."

"I didn't hate it. Honestly," Will insists. In truth, the show captured his interest in fits and starts. When Will could discipline his wandering mind, he rather enjoyed the singing and the production. For everyone on stage, their love of the craft permeated the air -- enough so that Will could practically taste it, sitting there in the dark. When Will allowed himself to be caught up in the drama, he felt like he was flying. But the upcoming cocktail hour kept tearing his attention away -- Will's anxiety about potentially meeting Bedelia's other patient, Will's anxiety about _not_ meeting Bedelia's other patient -- and at two separate moments during the production, every person in the theater around Will turned into birds. Needless to say, Will's mind could be extremely distracting. "You would know if I hated it," Will finds himself saying, "I'm not very good at faking it."

Hannibal grins, conspiratorial. 

"Tell me, Will,” he says, taking a step into Will’s personal space, “are you as honest in your enjoyment as you are in your displeasure?"

Will knows that the best way to answer that would be something flirty and shallow. It's what one of the other socialites would do. Perhaps slide an innuendo in there somewhere. The chittering behind Will erupts into fake-sounding laughter, and the sound is unbearably loud. Distracting. 

So instead, Will chokes a little, and says: "I think that's more of a third date kind of question."

"Third date to ask?" Hannibal takes another step closer, well into Will’s personal bubble, and cocks his head. "Or the third date to find the answer?"

Will looks at Hannibal and gropes for something -- anything -- to say. Behind Will, someone half-shouts _and so I said, dividends? You have got to be out of your mind!_

"Am I making you uncomfortable?"

"No," Will says, trying to keep his wandering attention on the man in front of him. "It's just been a long time since I've been flirted with. I'm a little rusty." Will's words are honest, bare. Take-me-or-leave-me. He tips the rest of the drink back and finishes it in one swallow.

"Forgive me, but I find that difficult to believe." Hannibal plucks Will's empty glass from his hand and expertly deposits it onto the tray of a passing waiter. 

"Really?" Will says, doubtful. It's so, achingly obvious that Will doesn't belong here. That he's a nervous, stuttering wreck.

Hannibal looks over Will with narrowed eyes, considering.

"You have social anxiety," Hannibal says, confident in his assessment. "You feel uncomfortable in crowds, or, at least crowds like these, and so you're too distracted by your perceived social exclusion to participate. I assure you -- while you do stick out, that's more to do with the dullness of the others here than your lack of belonging. The peacock will always draw more attention than the pigeon."

"Wow," Will says, lifting another drink off a waiter's tray and taking a generous sip. Fuck it, he’s committed to seeing this through. "I've never been called beautiful while being psychoanalyzed before. I'm not sure if I should be disturbed or flattered."

"I should apologize. That was perhaps more blunt than I intended."

Hannibal does not, Will notes, actually apologize. 

"Well, you're not wrong," Will says, taking another fortifying drink of his wine. "I _am_ uncomfortable in crowds, both 'like these' and otherwise. And I'm here tonight because my psychiatrist has been encouraging me to get outside my 'comfort zone' and mingle in the crowds I normally avoid, so," he gestures around the room, "here I am."

"Here you are," Hannibal says. He takes a sip of his own drink, and Will finds himself swallowing too. 

Mirroring. 

"Not too fond of eye contact, are you?"

Will laughs, incredulous, but he does flick his eyes up to Hannibal's.

"Eyes are distracting," he says. And it's true -- eyes _are_ distracting, Hannibal's in particular. He stares at Will, intent, almost hungry, with bald interest written across his face. He's so confident that his surety radiates outward, enveloping Will until Will actually feels a little more settled himself. 

Then Will blinks, and looks away. 

"You must be a psychiatrist."

"I am."

"Do you make a habit of psychoanalyzing people while you're hitting on them?"

"Not generally, no. Can you forgive my appalling lack of manners?"

"If you can forgive mine."

Behind Hannibal, a group of women in evening gowns are looking at Will and Hannibal and whispering between themselves. They look surprised, maybe. Definitely like they’re watching premium gossip fodder, like Hannibal is behaving out of character. Hannibal doesn’t appear to notice them at all, but something tells Will that he’s aware of the chatter, regardless. 

Something tells Will that Hannibal is always aware of his surroundings, regardless of whether or not he acknowledges them. 

"You have been a model of politeness. There's nothing to forgive."

"Oh, I've been on my best behavior tonight," Will says, "but if we make it to a third date I'll _definitely_ say something rude between now and then."

Will _sees_ things. He’s gotten a lot better at not acknowledging them, not giving voice to the strange and uncomfortable things that he understands, but sometimes they slip out. Or, sometimes he thinks his observations are so obvious that _everyone_ must realize. He’s not very good at judging that. 

“Do you make a habit of discourtesy?” Hannibal asks, and the question that probably _should_ sound chastising instead sounds… indulgent. Charmed. 

“I tend to view the world a little differently than most. I never intend to be rude, but… sometimes the things I say are taken differently than they’re meant.”

“An unfortunate circumstance that happens to us all, at some point or another.”

Will snorts. “You less often than most, I imagine.”

“Do I seem that proper?”

Will takes another moment to really _look_ at Hannibal: bespoke suit, silk tie, hair carefully combed into place. Fastidious. Surrounding him, an air of elegance, but also an air of amusement. Hannibal is a man who enjoys his own company, and often at the expense of others. He’s not rude -- not quite, but. There’s a bite to him, a sharpness of wit and a quickness of thinking that keeps him a few steps ahead of the socialites surrounding them. 

Hannibal is better than them, and he knows it.

“I think you’re rude pretty regularly, but you’re so polite about it that people don’t notice.”

This time, the smile curing around Hannibal’s lips reaches his eyes.

“And while you speak perfect English,” Will continues, “I bet you use the ‘language barrier’ as an excuse to say things that, if said by anyone else, would be considered rude. I bet any of those ladies over there would say that you’re charming, even while you’re saying something unkind, or using a double entendre.”

Hannibal doesn’t turn to look at the ladies Will is referring to, which means that he was, in fact, already aware of them.

“I would love to have you for dinner,” Hannibal says.

“Yeah,” Will says, taking a sip of his wine to cover his blush, “just like that.”

“There’s a lovely Italian place downtown,” Hannibal continues. “Are you free tomorrow night?”

“I can be.” The truth is that Will has no plans other than spending time with his dogs, but he leans on borrowed confidence to be at least somewhat coy. “But if you give me the name of a restaurant, I’ll probably forget it by morning.”

Will does not know his way around Baltimore. Truthfully, in recent years, the only time he’s spent inside of Baltimore City was spent revisiting the Chesapeake Ripper crime scenes, which isn’t exactly something he should say to someone _before_ a first date. On top of that, between the show, and the people, and _Hannibal,_ Will’s attention span is a little overloaded. He doesn’t want to stand Hannibal up on accident.

Hannibal pulls a fountain pen and a business card out of his suit, and proceeds to gracefully write on the card balanced in his left hand, and then hands the card off to Will. Will glances at it only long enough to see a name, address, and time, before he tucks it into his own pocket. He can look the place up later.

They linger, slightly awkwardly, as Will realizes that his last drink left him not-quite-sober-enough to drive, but that their conversation has come to its natural conclusion. He’s secured a date; now it’s time for him to be… somewhere else.

“May I take you around? Make some introductions?” Hannibal asks.

“Umm….” Will rubs the back of his neck, trying to think of a way to get out of that. He’s done quite enough socializing for one night.

“I am an expert at deflecting attention, if you would be more comfortable with observation than interaction.”

Will thinks about it -- imagines standing by Hannibal’s side, as Hannibal draws the socialites into some story and away from focusing on Will. Imagines coasting through social interactions, usually dreaded, by the grace and eloquence of someone else.

“Yeah,” he finds himself saying. “Okay. As long as you don’t mind me being…” Will trails off, not sure how to end his sentence. Tired? Awkward? Uncouth? Overstimulated and underwhelmed?

“I prefer honesty to pretense,” Hannibal says, offering Will his arm.

Will laughs and tucks his hand into the crook of Hannibal’s elbow. 

“Oh, you’ll get that with me. Trust me.”

__________

That night, Will lies awake in bed, matching all the similarities between Hannibal Lecter and Bedelia’s patient.

Will can’t be sure -- he doesn’t know Hannibal well enough, yet, and knows only what Bedelia wants him to know about her patient -- but he _knows._ It _fits._

Now Will has to be sure he doesn’t accidentally allude to something he’s not supposed to know. Something he couldn’t _possibly_ know.

__________

The nice thing about meeting Hannibal for dinner less than 24 hours after last seeing the man is that Will doesn’t have much time to panic or overthink. He takes the dogs out in the morning. Checks the property, stretches his legs. He reads over case files in the afternoon, to keep his mind occupied, and then cobbles together the nicest outfit he can without re-wearing anything he wore yesterday.

Thankfully, Will does have some fancy clothes. Not a lot, not enough to convincingly pretend that his wardrobe is actually nice, but enough to get him through a date or two without embarrassing himself. Enough to give himself time to buy more, if he needs them. 

Will hopes that he’ll need them.

__________

“So tell me, Will, what do you do for work?”

Will sits across the table from Hannibal in a fancy Italian restaurant, glad that he decided to dress up. Will would never have come into a place like this on his own, but Hannibal, once again, appears to be in his element. He greeted Will, charmed the waiters in fluent Italian, and has finally turned his undivided attention to Will.

"I'm a professor."

Hannibal smiles. "I have spent many years in the hallowed halls of academia, and so hold professors in high regard. What subject do you teach?"

"Criminal profiling. At Quantico." Hannibal blinks, and there’s -- surprise, curiosity, then recognition. Will fights not to groan out loud. "Please tell me you're not a Tattlecrime reader."

"Not regularly, no, though it is admittedly a guilty pleasure of mine, with Baltimore being the center of such unusual crime. I am well aware that Ms. Lounds is prone to exaggeration and the occasional outright fallacy."

Will had been hoping that he could spend at least a _little bit_ of time pretending to be a normal person, without his job and his strange talents poisoning the well. And for Hannibal to have been introduced to Will through Tattlecrime, of all places…

"So you _have_ read about me."

"I have read Ms. Lounds’ article on you, though I had not put two and two together until just now."

"Great."

The waiter comes by with two glasses and a bottle of wine. He makes a show of opening it, giving a small amount to Hannibal to test, and then pouring two generous glasses after Hannibal’s approving nod. 

“And are you ready to order, or will you need a few more minutes?” 

Will hasn’t even looked at the menu, but he blindly chooses something. He’s not a picky eater. Hannibal, unsurprisingly, orders without looking at the menu at all, and then the waiter is off and they’re alone once more. 

Hannibal raises his glass in a silent toast, takes a sip, and then picks up their conversation where they left off. 

"Ms. Lounds is not a psychiatrist. And as a professional, I know better than to believe anything she writes about other people's states of mind. Rest assured, her words have not impacted my opinion of you."

"And as a doctor, you don't think that makes me more... interesting?"

"Of course it does. I will not do you the discourtesy of pretending otherwise. But I am far more interested in getting to know you personally than as a subject of study, and I keep my personal and professional lives separate."

Will nods, and takes a long sip of his wine. 

"Well good. I already have a psychiatrist, and I'm not in the market for a new one." 

Even without Will’s high hopes for his potential future with Hannibal, it would still be hideously awkward for any date to turn into a psychoanalysis.

"Good."

Will raises an eyebrow at Hannibal's response.

"If I felt like you were in psychiatric distress and lacking help, I might feel obligated to step in, in which case I would have to put my personal feelings aside,” Hannibal elaborates. “Knowing that you already have someone to turn to in times when you might require psychiatric help means that that burden will never fall upon myself. Help, that is, that would fall outside the realm of what would be normal for an interpersonal relationship."

"And it really doesn't bother you, that I occasionally have a 'need' of psychiatric help?"

Will knows that plenty of people will swear up and down that they would _never_ think less of someone for mental health issues, but coincidentally would never date someone with mental health issues, either. 

“The brain is a complex and poorly understood organ. Even as a psychiatrist, I am constantly reminded of the limitations of my profession. There is an untold number of afflictions that can affect each part of the body; it is an unreasonable expectation on the part of society that the brain be somehow exempt from that.”

"Society is one thing. Someone you're... dating, is another." Will isn't sure that they _are_ dating, but he likes to think that they are. Or that they will be.

"Well, it would be rather hypocritical of me, as I see a psychiatrist myself."

Will mentally checks off another box -- not that he’s keeping any kind of score. He’s pretty reasonably sure that Hannibal is the one he was looking for. 

"Really?"

"Of course. I have for as long as I've been a practicing psychiatrist."

Will has no idea how long Bedelia has been practicing, but she seems similar in age to Hannibal, though that's not to say he would have to have been going to the same doctor all those years.

"If you're attempting to do the math, it's for less time than you think. I was a surgeon before I was a psychiatrist."

"Wow. You really weren't kidding about the 'hallowed halls' thing."

Hannibal smiles.

“The pursuit of knowledge is always a valuable pastime.”

The waiter returns, food in hand, in what seems like far too short a time. Will’s meal looks delicious, and smells better. 

A comfortable silence falls as they both take a few moments to eat.

"So tell me, Will, what do you do in your free time?"

And there it is: the dreaded small-talk. The change in subject _should_ be welcome, as Will wasn’t exactly enjoying their conversation about mental health, but Will is at least prepared to talk about those things. Spends enough time, talking to Bedelia, talking to Alana, talking to Jack. Small talk… small talk, Will is _bad_ at. 

Will knows that it's a necessary evil to getting to know someone, particularly someone that he ostensibly knows nothing about.

He _knows._

One of Will's many dating misfortunes stems from the fact that his work is too disturbing for most conversation, and his hobbies are either boring, weird, or both. 

"Well, I don't have a ton of free time," Will hedges, "but I like to fish." 

"To be perfectly honest, I know very little about fishing," Hannibal says, "though I do know a great deal about hunting."

"Ah, well, I won't bore you with the details." Will takes another bite, chewing his food as an excuse for following up. Hoping, instead, that Hannibal will jump in and talk about the opera, or music, or something that takes the spotlight off of Will. 

"No pursuit is ever boring in the hands of the right storyteller, and I am always interested in learning more about activities I have never experienced." To Hannibal's credit, he does actually seem interested, or at least he fakes it well. "What type of fishing do you do?"

"Fly fishing."

"The contemplative man's recreation, according to Walton."

Will laughs. "I think 'contemplative' is generally another word for boring."

"Do you find fly fishing boring?"

Will pauses. "No," he says, "I find it relaxing. It requires patience and a sort of... meditative stillness, for lack of a better term. If you move too much, you disturb the water, and you won't catch anything." Will takes another bite and tries to actually consider his hobby, instead of apologizing for it. 

"There's a certain kind of primal satisfaction that comes along with feeding yourself, instead of buying your meal, or shopping at a store. That can be said for hunting or fishing or even gardening -- they all have the same positive connection in our minds."

"We're all just hunter-gatherers, in the end?"

"A human is an animal, just like any other." Hannibal leans in slightly, his voice pitched low, intimate. "A great deal of modern stress and anxiety is borne of the divorce between our animal instincts and our sanitized realities."

Will grins. From anyone else, that would sound like a line. From Hannibal -- it sounds like a cross between a pronouncement and a promise. 

"So we would all be happier if we... gave in to our animal instincts?" 

"Well," Hannibal says, taking a sip of wine, "I suppose that depends on what kind of animal you are."

Will takes a sip of wine, too. "I suppose it does."

Will makes eye contact with Hannibal, then, feeling electric, seen, _desired._ He holds Hannibal’s eyes for as long as he dares to -- a few seconds at best -- before looking away, feeling as though he just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. 

"Tell me,” Hannibal says, warm and interested, “do you tie your own flies?"

"I do."

"From what I understand, that is an art form of its own."

Will considers Hannibal, then. The man has had every opportunity to change the conversation to something more interesting, a subject that Hannibal could speak about with confidence. But instead he keeps turning the conversation back to Will. Is he genuinely interested in fly fishing? Trying to size Will up, intellectually? Is he modest enough that he wants to turn the conversational reins over to Will? Over-confident? Under-confident?

Between the two of them, Will should be the most prepared, but he finds himself somewhat at a loss. 

Will takes a second to himself -- nods, in response to Hannibal, takes a bite of food, pushes some greens around on his plate -- and then forcibly pushes every date he's ever been on aside and focuses on Hannibal, here, now. 

Will talks about going for walks in the woods with his dogs, about finding interesting feathers and fur and bits of bones. About looking at the earth through the lens of a fisherman, instead of anything else that clutters his mind. 

(Will doesn't say that looking at the forest through the eyes of a fisherman stops him from looking at them through the eyes of a killer. That bright red cardinal feathers distract him from analyzing the best place to bury a body, or that his barking dogs cover whatever phantom screams might be lurking between the trees.)

And Hannibal, through all of it, nods and asks appropriate questions, like someone who is genuinely interested in hearing about fly fishing. Or, someone who is genuinely interested in learning about Will. 

They compare the difference between hunting vs fishing, stalking vs luring, and compare anecdotes from their different yet similar experiences. Will wouldn't have guessed that a man like Hannibal would get his hands dirty quite so literally, but the man clearly has experience with butchering, gutting, cleaning. The conversation is surprisingly refreshing -- dirty, gritty, and real.

"I prefer to have as much control over what I put into my body as possible," Hannibal says, spooning some kind of delicate fruit dessert into his mouth. 

Will isn't sure how they made it all the way to the dessert course without any kind of majorly awkward moment, but instead of his usual date-jitters, Will finds himself relaxed in Hannibal's presence. Chatty. Confident.

"I probably shouldn't admit how many gas-station burritos I eat, then, should I?"

To his credit, Hannibal doesn't make a face -- though Will can tell that he wants to.

"I do not judge how others live their lives. I control only my own."

Will laughs -- loose, free. "Don't lie, I know you judge people all the time." The words tumble out, overly-familiar. "It's all right, everyone does it. You don't have to be polite around me."

Hannibal's smile reaches his eyes, then. "Gas station burritos are not food," he says.

"They're not," Will agrees easily. 

Hannibal gaze travels over Will indulgently -- from Will's eyes, down to his lips, down to his throat. Hannibal doesn't bother trying to disguise his interest at all. He looks at Will the way that Will looks at a puzzle that he hasn't quite worked out yet, the way Will looks at a beautiful woman, or a quiet river.

Will allows himself to be seen.

"You're so confident." The words blurt out without Will's conscious permission, and he wishes he could take them back immediately. _Confident_ is usually used as a backhanded compliment, not a genuine one -- the implication often being that the person _should_ be ashamed, instead. A polite way to disparage someone's body or fashion or conduct.

This is how Will gets himself into trouble.

Instead, Hannibal smiles. 

"You're welcome to borrow it any time you like," he says, as though they're talking about Hannibal's pocket square and not a facet of personality.

"It doesn't quite work like that."

Hannibal just tilts his head slightly, as though to say _doesn't it?_

When the check comes, Hannibal forfeits a credit card without even looking at the total and hands it back to the waiter -- without even allowing Will to see the bill. The menu didn't have prices, which told Will all he needs to know about the type of restaurant they're in. 

"I asked you to dinner," Hannibal says, "I pick up the bill."

"I can pay my own way." 

It's not a sticking point, not really. Maybe ten, fifteen years ago, Will would have gotten his hackles up about someone else paying for him, would have assumed an insult about his class. But Hannibal isn't showing off, Will can tell. This is just who he is -- he has money and isn't concerned with spending it.

"I have no doubt that you can."

“Next time,” Will says, both a suggestion and a promise. He also doesn’t want Hannibal to think he’s interested in his money. Will truthfully isn’t -- he already has more than he needs to live comfortably. 

The waiter returns with the check, and then Will is gathering his jacket and being whisked out into the chilly evening. 

"I had a lovely time tonight,” Hannibal says as they walk down the street. For lack of any better idea, Will started walking in the general direction of where he parked, a few blocks away. Maybe there’s a ‘correct’ thing to be doing right now. Will doesn’t know. 

Will _thinks_ Hannibal is walking him to his car -- he followed Will out of the restaurant companionably and strolls casually at Will’s side. 

"Me too," Will replies, surprised to find that he actually means it. 

"I would like to see you again."

"Me too," Will repeats. He’s never been particularly smooth, and there doesn’t seem to be any point in pretending now. 

"I would cook for you, if you're comfortable coming to my home."

"You don't have to do that."

"I would like to. Cooking is one of my passions, one that I enjoy sharing with others. I would love to have you for dinner."

Will considers, for a moment. Is this an invitation or an _invitation?_ It seems rude to ask if Hannibal expects to have sex with him, if Will comes to his house. 

Will finds that he’s far less anxious about the prospect than he probably should be. 

"Okay," Will says. "Sure. When are you free?"

"Etiquette likely says that I should invite you for this coming weekend. However, in the interest of honesty, I would like to see you sooner, if you have the time to spare."

Will feels a little warm, at that. He's not entirely sure what the proper ‘etiquette' even _is._ Refusing to allow himself to over-think, Will replies, "how about Wednesday evening?" Will's classes let out early on Wednesday, which would give him enough time to make it from Quantico to Wolf Trap to change, and then make the trek up to Baltimore.

"Wednesday evening is perfect."

"I'll try my best not to cancel on you last-minute." With Will's job, there's no telling when he might be called away.

"I would never take personal offense. Your work is important, and the occasional work emergency is to be expected. I myself have emergencies with my patients as well, from time to time."

"Great. So we'll try our best not to cancel on each other, but duty calls."

Hannibal tucks a hand into his pocket and pulls out a business card, a handwritten address visible in the glow of the streetlights. Will takes it, caught somewhere between amused and surprised. 

Will's not sure when he wrote it. Maybe while Will was in the bathroom before they left the restaurant. Maybe he did it this afternoon, in anticipation of having a good date. Either way, it’s kind of nice to know that Hannibal is both invested in seeing Will again and slightly weird about their date, too. 

Being handed a business card should feel impersonal, but Will finds himself oddly charmed. 

“Wednesday night,” Hannibal repeats, “say, eight o’clock?”

Will nods. “This is me,” he says, gesturing to his car and slowing to a stop. 

Hannibal stops, too. Steps in close, into Will’s personal space. He cups Will’s jaw, fingertips brushing over Will’s fluttering pulse, and lets his thumb rest on Will’s lower lip -- just the barest hint of pressure, just enough for Will to know it’s there. For a moment, Will is _sure_ that he’s about to be kissed. Instead, Hannibal presses down just enough to make Will’s lips part, murmurs “sweet dreams,” and then drops his hand, turns, and walks away. 

Will states after him -- flustered and warm. He bites his lip, teeth running over the spot where Hannibal had touched, and watches the man walk down the block and around the corner. 

Will lets out a breath once he’s out of sight. “Okay,” he mutters to himself, barely more than a whisper, and gets into his car. 

That was… unexpected. 

Now if only his traitorous heart would stop racing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, everyone! I have 3 out of 4 chapters in the final editing stages, with chapter 4 about 60% complete, so I'm hoping that posting once a week will end with the last chapter finished on time! Currently clocking in at almost 70k words, this fic got a little... out of control.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for mildly dubious consent in this chapter.

Will isn't even sure what ‘dinner’ means. 

Admittedly, Will has never been very good at understanding the unspoken rules of social niceties. Social interactions are always a little exhausting, trying to figure out the actual _meaning_ behind what people say. But dating? Dating is like a stage play where everyone else got the script and no one informed Will that he was the starring lead until he was thrown under the spotlight.

There's a reason Will doesn't normally date. 

What is he supposed to _wear_ to dinner at someone else's house? Restaurants have a price range to go off of, sometimes even a dress code. Hannibal, Will assumes, will probably be dressed up, and so Will should too. Unless Hannibal would take this opportunity to dress down. Will has also never dated a man before -- is dinner an unspoken code for something else? Or does Hannibal truly intend to cook for him, and nothing more? Will isn't sure that he's ready for something more, but that's a question he will likely have to answer for himself before arriving at Hannibal's house. 

These seem like the sorts of questions that Will should outsource to a better opinion, but things with Alana are still awkward, and he doesn't want Beverly asking questions he's not ready to answer. Besides them, Will isn’t sure who else he can consult.

__________

"Absolutely not," Bedelia says. 

"Let me guess: you're a doctor, not a dating coach?"

Bedelia tilts her head and looks at him like a misbehaving puppy. 

"Yes. And I am not, under any circumstances, going to become your sounding board for your relationship."

"But..." Will says slowly. "...If I'm anxious, you're the person I talk to for my anxiety. Ergo, if I'm anxious about going on a date, you -"

"Will." She waits until she has his full attention, until she's sure he won't interrupt her. "You know as well as I do that I'm walking on very thin ice, as far as medical ethics are concerned. I cannot, and I will not, provide any further insights."

Bedelia has not actually confirmed that Hannibal _is_ her patient, and Will hasn't mentioned him by name. In fact, she hasn't talked about her motivations for sending him to the opera at all.

But he knows.

And he knows that she knows.

And he _definitely_ knows better than to push. 

__________

The address Hannibal supplied brings Will to a fancy, affluent neighborhood in Baltimore. Will allows himself exactly sixty seconds of freaking out in his car. The man is both a doctor and a _Count_ (probably) -- and between his fancy suits and the way he commanded attention at the opera house, Will knew that he was pursuing a man of considerable means. Being _pursued_ by a man of considerable means. 

Will hasn't lived in any kind of genuine poverty for decades, but he still struggles with ostentatious wealth, sometimes. 

_It's fine,_ he thinks, knuckles surely white around the bottle of wine he's clutching like a damn buoy, _you knew what you were getting into._

Sixty seconds up. 

Will forces himself out of the car and up the front steps of the mansion in front of him: old, brick, and an intimidating three stories of looming windows. He knocks. Waits. Hannibal answers the door, and the next few minutes disappear in a flurry of greetings and pleasantries and coat-taking. 

"I brought this," Will says, handing off his bottle of wine. He tries to tamp down his self consciousness and project the same calm certainty that Hannibal seems to radiate all the time. 

Hannibal takes the bottle from Will and reads the label, cradling it in his hands with more tenderness than the action warrants. Will finds himself oddly distracted by Hannibal's hands -- fingers curled loosely around the neck, right hand grasped firmly around the base -- so he glances around the entryway. Beautiful, elegant, old. Much the same as the outside of the house. 

"This is an excellent choice," Hannibal announces, calling back Will's attention. "You did not need to bring anything other than yourself, but thank you."

"I can't really take credit," Will says honestly. "Thank the sommelier I talked to. I went with what she recommended."

"You went to a sommelier?" 

Will had been expecting Hannibal to be mildly amused by the admission, so he isn't prepared for the small, sincere smile that actually reaches Hannibal's eyes.

Will shrugs, unexpectedly uncomfortable with the attention Hannibal has focused on him. "I didn't want to bring you something that you wouldn't drink, which is exactly what would have happened if I picked it myself. I’m more of a whisky drinker."

Hannibal puts a hand on the small of Will's back and leads him through the house.

"First, I would drink any wine that you brought me,” Hannibal says while they walk. “To do otherwise would be unspeakably rude. And second, I don't expect you to have all of the same interests as I have, or the same knowledge that I have.” They pass through a formal sitting room, and then a meticulously decorated dining room. “You would be surprised by how many people would not be willing to admit to their ignorance, nor would they go out of their way to compensate for it by seeking an expert opinion. Too many of my acquaintances would simply pick the most expensive bottle, regardless of pairing or quality."

The most expensive bottle had been many thousands of dollars out of Will's price range.

"It's just a bottle of wine."

"No gift is 'just' anything." Hannibal stops in the doorway of the kitchen. "This was particularly thoughtful, and will pair perfectly with dinner."

Despite himself, Will is impressed by the kitchen. The whole house is clearly beautiful and expensive, but this room -- this is clearly the heart of the home. Looking like a cross between a restaurant kitchen and what you might expect in a house this caliber, Will can feel Hannibal in every inch of this space. 

"Dinner will be ready in about ten minutes. Would you like to start with a glass of this?" Hannibal says, holding up the bottle.

"Sure, why not."

Hannibal moves expertly through the kitchen. In the blink of an eye Hannibal has uncorked the bottle, materialized two stemmed wine glasses seemingly from thin air, and poured two generous glasses. He brings them back to Will, who is still hovering in the doorway. Will takes the one Hannibal offers him, grateful for something to do with his hands. 

"Cheers," Will says, gently tapping his glass against Hannibal's. 

They're probably real crystal. 

The wine is actually quite good -- smoky, rich, and dark. Feeling uncharacteristically bold, Will makes eye contact with Hannibal as he tastes it. The moment lingers, sensual and heated, until Hannibal breaks his gaze. 

"Come," Hannibal says, returning to the center of the room to check something in the oven. "Make yourself comfortable." He gestures towards a chair in the corner of the room that Will hadn't noticed, a plush, leather piece, something that looks like it should be in a study, not a kitchen. "I spend a lot of time in here," Hannibal says, an explanation. "Not everyone likes to stand for a significant amount of time, and so I have somewhere comfortable for guests to sit."

Will does not sit. Instead he wanders up to the counter opposite Hannibal, sets his glass down, and watches him work. Hannibal moves around the kitchen with a dancer’s precision. He's in his element, here, much like he was when swanning around the opera, only this time, instead of moving from person to person, he's carefully touching up each element of dinner -- stirring here and checking there, making a sauce and pulling something fragrant out of the oven. 

“May I show you to the table? This shall be done in a moment.”

“While I do appreciate the pageantry of presentation,” Will says, “I prefer sneaking a peak behind the curtain. If you would have me here, that is.”

Hannibal turns to face Will fully. He looks at Will, assessing and contemplative -- more so than Will’s words actually called for. Will isn’t sure exactly _what_ he said to garner that reaction.

“I would have you any way you’d let me.”

Will shivers. The look in Hannibal’s eyes is hungry. A little dark. A little sharp. Hannibal smiles slightly, mostly to himself, and then turns to begin plating. 

This, too, Hannibal performs elegantly, putting on more of a show than he perhaps would have if Will weren’t here -- lifting the spoon high to drizzle over the plate like a painter, spooning vegetables in a graceful arch. With his sleeves rolled up above his elbows, forearms on display, Hannibal is… sensual. Maybe even sexy, which is a strange thought for Will to have about another man, but less disconcerting than Will would have expected. Will’s eyes trail up Hannibal’s forearms to his surprisingly muscular shoulders, across his chest and then back down to his trim torso. Hannibal is, objectively, a very attractive man. 

Hannibal looks up, then, and catches Will staring. 

“Is there anything I can help with?” Will asks, pulled between the desire to hide his gaze versus his desire to own it. So what if he was caught staring? They’re on a _date_ \-- it’s allowed. 

“Refill the wine and carry it to the table?”

Will tops off both glasses, and by the time he turns back around Hannibal has both plates in hand. 

The plates in Hannibal's hands turn out to be an appetizer, because of course -- how could Will have expected anything _other_ than a three-course meal? Their conversation stays light by unspoken agreement. Will talks about his students, and Hannibal, about his most recent trip to the farmer's market, since his work is obviously not an appropriate subject. Will finds himself acting like a _person_ \-- laughing, smiling, actually _enjoying_ what is usually his least favorite part of any date. 

(Will finds himself, too, distracted by Hannibal's mouth. By Hannibal's neck, and hands, and the soft way his hair curves over his forehead.)

When Hannibal brings out the main course is when the conversation turns more serious.

"I do not wish to make you uncomfortable," Hannibal says, "so if there's any subject that is off-limits, just say the word and I won't bring it up again."

Will takes a generous sip of wine to fortify himself. "You want to ask about my mirroring."

Will has been expecting this conversation. But, even expecting it, he doesn’t want to _have_ it. He wants a few more dates to pretend to be normal. A few more dates to make himself interesting, to Hannibal, before the other man makes a judgement on his mental health. 

"It is, undoubtedly, an important part of who you are. And, as such, it is something that affects your daily life."

"...And it's something that turns out to be a deal-breaker for most people," Will says, setting his wine down, "so I might as well get that out on the table now."

"That is not the reason that I'm asking."

Will winces through an attempt at an affable grin. 

"It's okay, I've been crazy my whole life. I'm used to it."

"'Crazy' is not a productive descriptor," Hannibal says. 

"Is that your professional opinion, Dr. Lecter?" The words come out abrasive, caustic. Will can't help it. 

Hannibal takes a few bites of food, clearly weighing his words. 

(Will can always count on himself to ruin the mood.)

"If you were a paraplegic, we would be having a similar conversation about expectations, and limitations. This is not an attempt to screen you, or remove you from my life. Rather the opposite." Hannibal sets his utensils down and leans forward, focusing all of his attention on Will. "Neurodivergence is often treated by society as either a sickness or a failure of character, of which it is neither. Like paraplegia, or deafness, or those in the autistic community -- all are examples of people who are markedly different from what is considered normal, and yet many members of those groups would not change themselves, even if offered a 'cure.' We can take pride in that which makes us different. I do. I myself would hardly be considered normal, and yet I would walk willingly into my own grave before I would allow someone to change me."

Will blinks at the unexpected vehemence in Hannibal’s voice. "I wouldn't," he says, honest. "I really wouldn't mind, being normal."

Will thinks, somewhat uncharitably, that Hannibal would only be considered abnormal because he would instead be considered _exceptional._ But if he truly is Bedelia's patient, he has trauma. Baggage. The person that he has become would have been forged in the fires of loss and death. 

"Do you truly desire to have a different mind? Or is that the tension and expectations of a world that does not understand you affecting your self worth?"

"I guess I hadn't really thought about it that way."

"Being 'normal' is easier. But would you truly prefer it? Or do you just desire understanding and acceptance, two things that you often find out of reach?"

"I guess," Will says slowly, "I find it hard to imagine a world where I'm not treated like a freakshow."

Hannibal gestures around the room. 

"Imagine it here."

Will swallows. Blinks. Takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. He lets his eyes meet Hannibal's and finds steadfast conviction. But that conviction is not alone. There's something else lurking beneath the surface, something that Will can't quite get a grasp on. Hannibal is offering Will unconditional acceptance, and yet Hannibal does not necessarily seem like a man to offer things freely. His offerings have prices, strings, but Will has a feeling that those are tied up in whatever skeletons hide in his own closet.

(Hannibal offers unconditional acceptance, because that is what he wishes he could receive from others. He is offering acceptance to Will, in the hopes that Will, too, will offer the same in return, one day.)

Will smoulders with pent-up energy. He hasn’t -- 

He doesn’t -- 

Will pushes his chair away from the table, not breaking eye contact with Hannibal. Stands. Walks around the table until he looms over Hannibal, who has turned in his seat to follow Will’s movements, but otherwise sits passive, watching. 

Will leans forward and kisses Hannibal’s upturned mouth. With one hand he braces himself on the back of the chair, and the other he uses to cup Hannibal’s jaw. He tries to convey in the kiss what he can’t say in words -- gratitude, acceptance, the intensely personal feeling of being _seen_ by a near stranger on a second fucking date. 

The sheer _absurdity_ of that. 

Hannibal gives back as good as he gets. He bites at Will’s lower lip, gets a hand into Will’s hair and uses it to angle Will’s head exactly how he wants it. Hannibal slips his tongue into Will’s mouth and Will loses minutes to memorizing the way Hannibal tastes, the hot slick of tongue and the unforgivingness of Hannibal’s hand still clutching his hair. Will starts to wonder if they’re even going to finish dinner, if he even _wants_ to… 

Will makes the executive decision to pull back, slightly. To gentle his next kiss, and make the one after that even gentler. To pull away and lean his forehead against Hannibal’s, eyes closed, taking a moment to breathe shared air. 

He’s panting, slightly. Hannibal is, too. 

(Hannibal asked him about his mirroring, and he deserves a real answer, not just defensiveness, not just rudeness. And not deflection, either. Hannibal won’t judge Will -- Will knows that, now. He has to rip off the bandaid, take off his mask, throw himself off the cliff of hiding his true self. Hiding, he’s not doing himself any favors. Either Hannibal will accept him, or he won’t -- but Will thinks that he will.)

Will presses one last kiss against Hannibal’s lips, then pulls back completely and stands up straight. Hannibal looks up at him, pupils wide and dark, like Will is some kind of mesmerizing, cherished thing. 

Will has to force himself to step back and sit back in his seat. 

"My mirroring is complicated," Will says, voice rough. "I don't have a diagnosis that I can point to and help you understand, or any specific case studies. I'm sure other people like me exist and have existed, but I won't allow myself to be studied, and I expect that they feel the same way."

Hannibal blinks. "I understand. And, if it needs to be said, the nature of our relationship has already crossed the boundary of what is appropriate in the scientific community. I would therefore not be able to write a paper on you, regardless of whatever insights I could glean in knowing you."

"That's actually nice to know. Thank you."

Hannibal nods.

"The short version is that I tend to understand people a little too well, past the point of normal empathy, and people tend not to like that." 

"A fascinating insight,” Hannibal says. “I would have thought that understanding people would make you a more attractive partner, not less."

Will laughs and shakes his head. "People are strange. People want to be seen as the person that they want to be seen as, not necessarily for the person that they are. Everyone has the capacity for ugliness -- not just violence, but selfishness, envy, jealousy, vindictiveness. People rarely present themselves 'warts and all' -- and they don't like to be seen that way, either. They put up a socially-acceptable mask, and they want someone to fall in love with _that_ \-- not necessarily with who they really are. Being a person who understands people... it's more often seen as threatening.”

Hannibal nods and takes a sip of his wine. 

"So you don't just understand so-called _evil minds,_ you have the capacity to understand anyone?"

Will groans. "I hate that. _Evil Minds._ Jack and I -- Jack Crawford, the head of the BAU -- have argued about that name before. It's... reductive. Patronizing. And woefully disengaging from the subject matter. But to answer your question, yes, I can understand just about anyone, but some people are more transparent than others."

"So, do you not believe them to be evil, or do you merely object to the phrasing?"

Will takes a bite of food to buy himself a moment’s time. 

"It's easy to fall into the trap of _Evil Minds,”_ he says. “And sure, some of them are undoubtedly evil, but thinking of them that way is a… a crutch. The only way to understand them is to understand that they're usually just one degree removed from normal. They often have jobs, families, loved ones. People who don't know what they are, or what they're doing. If you focus too much on the _evil_ you miss the man, and you can't catch the concept of evil. You can only catch people.

"The killers that I've caught... Garrett Jacob Hobbs was motivated by his love for his daughter. Stammets wanted to make connections. Buddish wanted to be protected from cancer, from death. I’m not saying that they’re not monsters. They are. The things they do are evil, but evil itself is rarely the motivator."

“A shark is not motivated by evil, regardless of how its teeth may render human flesh,” Hannibal says, understanding, “and even the monsters of western imagination, such as the werewolf, or the vampire, are motivated by madness and hunger respectively.”

“Exactly.”

"And yet, for as much of your time is spent searching for the most dangerous society has to offer, you don’t seem to be afraid of them."

Will sets his fork down and considers how to answer. Will _is_ afraid. In fact, Will is afraid every day, virtually every _hour_ on the days he's actually profiling. But that's not the fear Hannibal is talking about -- it’s not the kind of fear that normal, healthy people experience.

"Not in the conventional sense, no."

"And in the unconventional sense?"

"Vampires and werewolves aren't frightening because they're monsters, they're frightening because they're _us._ "

Hannibal tilts his head in understanding. "And so we are all only one monstrous bite away from becoming monsters ourselves."

"That's a big part of it. The other part... I get inside their heads, but in some ways it's a two-way street."

"When you force your mind to view the world from their perspective, _your_ worldview is ever-altered, even if the difference is slight."

Will nods. "And then the fear is that there's some kind of critical mass. If you knock your world off its base enough times," _sanity_ ostensibly being the base, "does it crack? _That's_ what I'm afraid of."

_I’m afraid of becoming one of the monsters that I hunt. I’m afraid that one day I’ll find a killer whose perspective of the world is seductive enough for my mind to give in to it; that the humanity in me will slowly be burned away, that every time I catch a killer I fly closer and closer to the sun, and the wax holding my wings together gets softer and softer with every flight, every case._

"In my professional opinion, I believe that makes you remarkably sane."

Will can't help but laugh. Bedelia probably has a word or two to say about Will's sanity. Jack, too. 

Will takes a sip of his wine to give himself something to do with his hands.

"That really doesn't bother you?" 

Hannibal's aplomb is -- unprecedented. Unique.

"No," Hannibal says, enviable conviction in a single syllable. "The human condition is far more complex than most give credit for. There is a popular perception that my patients are disaffected socialites and distraught executives. On the contrary, I have had patients that ranged from catatonic to psychotic, with many different neuroses in between. I even had a patient that, even after many years of treatment, ended up becoming a serial killer."

And so Hannibal, too, has spent time inside the minds of his patients. A serial killer, even. Will has never knowingly met a person who would later become a serial killer. The concept is an interesting one _,_ and he wants to ask Hannibal about what that was like, but he knows that he can't. Hannibal has probably said too much already, as far as medical ethics are concerned. If he tells Will more than the barest of detail, Will would be able to figure out who the patient was. 

"It always seems inevitable, in hindsight," Will says. "I trace backwards. I look at what they've done, and that allows me to build a picture of who they are. If you look at enough killers, you start to see patterns. It leaves you wondering...." Will trails off, unsure of how best to finish his thought. 

"You wonder which was the first step down that path, and whether or not you would be able to recognize it, if you walked it yourself."

"Yeah," Will says, eyes flicking up to meet Hannibal's. "Yeah, that exactly."

Will takes a bite of food, mostly forgotten on the table before him. Usually only Bedelia _sees_ him this easily. Well. Bedelia, and every woman he has gone on a date with, though they usually only get the sour flavor of Will’s poisoned thoughts -- not the whole process _behind_ those thoughts. 

“You mentioned Hobbs, Stammets, and Buddish,” Hannibal says, “but what do you think about a killer like the Chesapeake Ripper?”

Will chews his food slowly. 

“I’ve never actually worked a Ripper case,” he says finally. “I’ve looked over the case files, but it’s not the same. I work best in active crime scenes, when I can experience them the way the killer experienced them. I don’t think that the Ripper is motivated by evil, because I don’t think _any_ killers are, but,” Will shrugs, “I don’t really know. What I do know is that whatever the Chesapeake Ripper is, he’s exactly the opposite of Garrett Jacob Hobbs.”

"Hobbs was a cannibal, was he not?"

"He was, yes."

Will doesn't like talking about the Garrett Jacob Hobbs case. Doesn't particularly like _thinking_ about the Garrett Jacob Hobbs case, if he's honest, though that way leads admonishments from Bedelia about repression and avoidance. Hobbs was the first case Will worked with Jack, with the BAU, and with Alana reluctantly tagging along to ensure that Jack didn't take advantage of Will _too_ badly. 

Will's logical leap to cannibalism was easy to explain -- his reasons for plucking Hobbs's resignation letter was harder. Will and Alana had gone to the Hobbs house to interview him. For Will to get a _feel_ for him, decide if the man was worth a closer look. Will had expected --

Well, even now Will doesn't know what he had expected. That he would have been able to look at Hobbs and _know_ , or that he would have had some kind of intuitive leap that would solve the case then and there, or that there would be some obvious evidence laying about the house that he could connect in a Holmsenian deduction. (Will was _new_ and didn't know better, then.) 

Instead, he got a very kindly Mrs. Hobbs answering the door, pleasantly confused as to why consultants from the FBI were at her doorstep. And then -- screams, from inside, once Garrett Jacob Hobbs realized who was at the door, and that his time with his precious, cherished daughter was about to draw to a close. 

By the time Will and Alana had pushed past Mrs. Hobbs and rushed to the kitchen, Garrett Jacob Hobbs had a knife to his daughter Abigail's throat. 

Time slowed. 

Will pulled out his gun -- issued to him, but with the expectation he would never actually use it -- but he wasn’t fast enough to stop the inevitable arc of the knife, the arterial spray. 

Will fired. And fired, and fired, and fired, until he ran out of bullets, while Alana tried to keep Abigail alive and Mrs. Hobbs screamed. 

Garrett Jacob Hobbs, slumped against the cabinet and riddled with bullets, looked straight through Will and said, _“See. See.”_

(Abigail survived, barely, locked in a coma, on a ventilator, and unlikely to ever wake. Mrs. Hobbs took her daughter and fled Minnesota -- took them back to Ohio, where she was originally from, and started using her maiden name, so that people wouldn’t connect them to her husband -- to the _Campus Cannibal,_ as Freddie Lounds had dubbed him. Will still checks in on them, from time to time. Mrs. Hobbs hates to hear from him, but she responds, nonetheless.)

“And what about Hobbs sets him as the Ripper’s opposite?” Hannibal asks, drawing Will’s attention back to the here and now.

“Hobbs killed as an act of love. He loved his daughter more than anything, and killing girls that looked like her was his way of keeping her with him forever. Hobbs was a hunter,” Will adds, “and according to his wife, he always insisted on using every part of his kills. He had to honor every part of them, or else the killing was just murder.” Will eyes the centerpiece on Hannibal’s table, flowers intertwined around antlers. Antlers, wreathed in flowers. 

“And so while the Campus Cannibal killed for love, the Chesapeake Ripper kills as an act of hate?”

Will starts shaking his head before Hannibal has even finished speaking. “Hate and love are two ends of the same spectrum. No, the Ripper is… indifferent. The people he kills are a canvas, or a brush. An artist doesn’t hate, or love, a blank canvas.”

“The Ripper sees his victims as inconsequential objects, whereas Hobbs saw his victims as cherished acts of love.”

“Exactly.”

Will flicks his eyes up to meet Hannibal’s. 

"But enough about serial killers," Will says. "I get enough of that at work."

"And you would think that I get enough psychoanalyzing at work, and yet this conversation shows how easily we fall into regular patterns, as well as how much we allow our careers to define us."

"Yeah well, you must be a damn good psychiatrist, because I'm pretty sure I just told you more about my mind than I've told... anyone. I feel far more naked in this conversation that I ever have by taking off my clothes."

A wicked grin curls around Hannibal’s mouth. "You could take off your clothes, if that would make you more comfortable."

Will laughs, blushing.

"Dessert?" Hannibal offers.

"Yes, please."

Will follows Hannibal into the kitchen, unwilling to wait in the dining room. Unsure that he even wants to go _back_ to the dining room. He leans against the island counter while Hannibal gets bowls from the cabinet, then opens the freezer. 

“Fig and honey sorbet,” Hannibal says, withdrawing a container.

“Homemade?”

“And home grown. I have a fig tree in the garden.”

Will could ask about Hannibal’s garden, but he doesn’t. Instead he leans back more fully against the counter and watches Hannibal openly, while Hannibal dishes a scoop of sorbet into one of the bowls. 

There’s an undefined feeling pinging around in Will’s head that he’s never quite encountered before. A restlessness, a _hunger._ For the first time, he can understand how Garret Jacob Hobbs’ consumption was an act of love. Will wants to sink his teeth into Hannibal’s neck. The feeling is akin to cute aggression -- the desire to squeeze something adorable -- but far more vicious. 

Hannibal glances over at Will and some of Will’s thoughts must show in his eyes, because Hannibal puts the sorbet away without filling the other bowl. He steps into Will’s personal space, holds a spoon up to Will’s lips. 

Will opens his mouth and lets Hannibal feed him. He lets the sorbet melt on his tongue, and then Hannibal is there, licking into his mouth. By comparison, Hannibal’s tongue is scalding. Hannibal feeds him another, then another, interspersed with Hannibal tasting Will until Will is panting and aching, the hot curl of Hannibal’s tongue against his own setting him on fire. Hannibal sets the bowl down on the counter, and then there’s a hand cupping the hardness in Will’s slacks. 

“May I take you upstairs?” Hannibal murmurs against Will’s mouth. 

Will swallows. “Yes,” he says, then gasps when the hand on his cock cups him more firmly. Hannibal crowds him back against the counter, and his hand squeezes and then rubs until Will is left biting his lip and panting. He thinks, for a moment, that Hannibal will change his mind -- will unbuckle Will’s belt and slip his hand into Will’s pants right there in the kitchen -- but then Hannibal takes a step back from where he has Will pinned against the counter, and takes Will’s hand instead.

“Come,” Hannibal says, tugging him forward. 

They make their way back through the house, up the stairs near the front door, and into an opulent bedroom before Will can quite get his bearings.

Hannibal runs his hands down Will’s chest, then tugs his shirt open, button by button. 

(Will forewent a tie, though Hannibal did not.)

Will’s shirt is shed, then his undershirt, then his belt. Will hasn’t even had time to reciprocate -- hard to take Hannibal’s vest off, when Will’s arms are tangled up in his own shirt removal -- but he gets his chance when Hannibal is distracted by his button and zipper. 

Will doesn’t get very far, though. By the time Hannibal has him stripped completely bare, Will has only unbuttoned Hannibal’s vest and the top buttons of his shirt. 

“This is feeling very unequal,” Will says. 

Hannibal bites at Will’s mouth. “Get on the bed.”

Will gets. He lies down and watches while Hannibal strips efficiently, folds his clothes into a neat pile, and then stalks towards Will. Will’s legs fall open instinctively, cock hard and leaking against his abdomen -- on display, waiting to be devoured. 

“You look like a feast,” Hannibal says. He grabs supplies from the bedside table and then climbs onto the bed, between Will’s legs, and presses a searing kiss to Will’s mouth. “What part shall I have of you first?”

“Anything you want.” Will means it. He’s trembling, panting, with Hannibal’s hard cock rubbing against his hip bone, Hannibal’s voice in his ear and Hannibal’s scent all around him. 

Hannibal’s hand closes around Will’s cock and gives a few perfect strokes, while his mouth travels. First, to Will’s neck, then his collar bone, then his nipple, which causes Will to gasp and grab at Hannibal’s hair. He’s never had anyone pay particular attention to his nipples, before. The women he’s slept with normally ignore them. Hannibal’s teeth close around the nub and pull while Hannibal’s thumb rubs over the head of his cock. 

Will makes a positively _undignified_ noise. 

Hannibal switches sides and Will is half-sure that he’s about to embarrass himself. But then Hannibal continues onward, pressing open-mouthed kisses down Will’s abdomen until he gets to --

“Fuck!”

Hannibal deep-throats him in a single swallow, then pulls all the way off, licks over the tip, and does it again, and again. Will grabs at the sheets, afraid that he’ll rip Hannibal’s hair out if he grabs at him, and tries to hold on.

There’s the click of a bottle, and then a slick finger rubbing behind Will’s balls, back further. The press of the first finger _inside_ is uncomfortable, even with Hannibal mouthing at the head of his cock. But then that finger crooks and rubs, and finds the spot inside Will that has him seeing stars. One finger becomes two, and Will is pretty sure that the high keening whine he hears is coming from himself. 

Legs trembling, chest heaving, Will feels like something out of a porno -- a far cry from his usual awkward self. He looks down just as Hannibal looks up. At their eye contact, Hannibal twists his fingers and presses deep, rocketing Will straight to the edge. 

Hannibal will make him come like this -- no, Hannibal _wants_ to make him come like this. 

Will is -- overwhelmed, out of his depth. He wants everything, all at once: Hannibals’s mouth on his cock, Hannibal’s body pressing his own down into the sheets, Hannibal’s cock replacing his fingers. 

Hannibal, Hannibal, Hannibal. 

“Fuck me,” Will gasps, not fully expecting the words himself until they fall from his tongue. “God, Hannibal, _please.”_

It’s _fast._ Too fast, maybe -- it seems like only seconds ago they were in the kitchen, and only seconds before that, at the dinner table. 

Hannibal pulls off of Will’s cock, presses a kiss to his hip bone. 

“Are you sure?”

Will nods, not entirely trusting this voice. 

Hannibal withdraws his fingers and pushes back in with a third. The stretch is more intense, and Will can’t help the small punched-out whine he makes as Hannibal’s knuckles push past his rim. 

“Have you done this before?”

Will lets out a shaky laugh. 

“That obvious?”

Will doesn’t want to _talk_ . Doesn’t want to talk about his sexual history or experience or… any of it. He wants to _fuck,_ wants the hot press of Hannibal inside him. 

“This,” Hannibal says with a rub over his prostate, causing Will to jerk and gasp, “seemed to surprise you.”

“I…” Will doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t want to admit his own inexperience, doesn’t want to lie. He _definitely_ doesn’t want to have a conversation while naked in Hannibal’s bed -- he’s done quite enough talking, tonight. Now he wants to feel, to enjoy, to act without worrying about consequences. 

Hannibal pulls his fingers out, pushes one of Will’s knees down straight against the bed and hooks Will’s other leg over his hip, then tips them so that they’re facing one another. The motion is fluid, seamless, and leaves Will with access to Hannibal’s mouth. 

Will kisses Hannibal as Hannibal slips his hand between Will’s legs and pushes his fingers back in. Will’s hips jerk of their own accord, rocking forward against Hannibal’s cock and then back onto Hannibal’s fingers. Hannibal’s other hand circles both of their cocks, and then it’s just the hot press of body against body, Hannibal’s fingers splitting him open. Will can’t keep up with kissing -- he pants against Hannibal’s mouth as his hips hitch forward and then back, chasing the dual sensations. That precipice that had plateaued when they started talking is back in sight, as Will winds higher and higher. 

Hannibal’s fingers pull out, sudden and unexpected, and then there are hands on Will’s hips, readjusting, hiking his thigh up higher and changing the angle. Hannibal’s cock thrusts between his cheeks, the head catching on Will’s stretched-out rim. 

“Please,” Will moans, wanting to feel all of him. 

Hannibal’s nostrils flare, and then Will finds himself pushed onto his back, Hannibal looming over him. Hannibal’s hand fumbles for the condom he dropped on the pillow, and _oh, right_ \-- only one of them seems to be thinking clearly, and it’s definitely not Will, that’s for sure. 

Hannibal unwraps the condom, rolls it on, and adds more lube. He doesn’t ask Will again if he’s sure -- just manhandles Will into the right position, then pushes in. 

Will feels _full._ He clutches at Hannibal’s shoulders as his cock pushes all the way in to the hilt. Hannibal gives him a few seconds to adjust to the stretch, then pulls out, and pushes back in. The press is unlike anything Will has felt before. Hannibal shifts his position a little, and then thrusts, and that -- that lights Will up like a book of matches. Will gasps and digs his fingers into Hannibal’s back, trying to get a grip on something, _anything,_ trying not to just dissolve into a puddle of nerve endings. 

Hannibal pulls out, and thrusts in again -- rubbing right up against Will’s prostate in the best, most overwhelming way. Then again, and again, and again, working into a rhythm that has Will wondering how he’s been missing out on _this_ his entire life without even _realizing_ it. 

Then Hannibal’s slick hand wraps around Will’s cock and Will nearly _cries._

“I’m not gonna last,” Will moans. “I can’t -”

“Don’t hold yourself back.”

The hand on Will’s cock strokes hard, fast, _perfect._ Will tries to hold on for a little while longer, if only to revel in the sensations, but he can’t -- he comes with a choked-off moan, muffled against Hannibal’s shoulder. Hannibal strokes him through it, until Will is whining with overstimulation, and then Hannibal lifts his hand and licks it clean of Will’s come. Hannibal thrusts a few more times, hard and unforgiving, before burying his face in Will’s neck and gasping. 

They lie together, panting and sated, for a few long moments. Will trails his fingers up and down Hannibal’s spine, straying over his surprisingly muscular back and then back up to the soft hair at the nape of his neck. 

Will really just -- did that. Fucked a man and had a _great_ time doing it. Turns out there was more he had to learn about himself than he might have guessed. 

_My psychiatrist has been encouraging me to get outside of my comfort zone._

Will presses a kiss against Hannibal’s shoulder in an effort to muffle his laughter at the thought. Hannibal doesn’t seem to notice. He _does_ pull out, though, which is not the most comfortable thing, and ties the condom off. 

The thought of Hannibal coming inside him is… surprisingly appealing, though that’s something they should talk about when they’re dressed and _not_ in bed. 

Hannibal pads off to the bathroom to dispose of the condom, then reappears a few seconds later, looking mussed and soft. He shuts off the lights, then climbs into bed. 

“Sleep.”

  
  


Will wakes the next morning to an empty bed. The bedroom door is ajar, and he can hear the distant sounds of Hannibal moving around downstairs, so he’s not too concerned about Hannibal’s whereabouts. 

No, Will’s first concern is the fact that he smells like sex, and his hair is probably a complete mess, and he’s sore in ways that he usually _isn’t._ He gives himself about ten seconds in Hannibal’s absurdly comfortable bed before he tosses the covers back and forces himself to his feet. 

Will is unsurprised to find that Hannibal’s ensuite bathroom is exactly as fancy as the rest of the house. Complete with a clawfoot tub and a standalone shower, Will swears he’s seen this exact same bathroom in one of the interior design magazines they have in doctors’ office waiting rooms. 

(That, or all rich people’s houses look the same.)

Will takes a shower, scrubbing at his scalp and revelling in the water pressure. The toiletries, too, are needlessly fancy -- they all have French script on the labels and have some kind of sweet, woodsy scent. Hannibal would probably balk if he saw (when he sees?) the contents of Will’s shower, but at the very least Will doesn’t use a 2-in-1 shampoo/conditioner combo. 

(Anymore.)

Will feels like he should, maybe, be freaking out -- but he’s not. He enjoyed last night. He enjoyed the sex, and he… he actually _told_ a person that he’s _dating_ that he empathizes with serial killers so often that he’s afraid of _becoming one._ And it was _fine._ Hannibal didn’t even _care._ Will blinks. That really happened. It’s hard to believe that Hannibal actually _doesn’t care._ But. He genuinely doesn’t seem to. 

Will exits the shower in a plume of steam, bundled in a fluffy white bath towel. Will usually doesn’t bother with the expensive stuff -- it’s a _bath towel_ \-- but there’s something surprisingly nice about the soft, fluffy fabric against his skin. Will couldn’t have bath towels this fluffy, anyway. Not with seven dogs that eat grass until they puke, who are fully bathroom-trained until Will is away on a work trip for too long and they get resentful upon his return and start peeing in weird places around the house. 

Will pads back out into the bedroom in search of clothes. He finds them neatly folded on top of the dresser, along with a clean pair of underwear.

(His own pair of underwear is nowhere to be found.)

Will ambles downstairs, clean and neatly dressed, to find a fresh mug of coffee waiting for him, and Hannibal behind the stove cooking breakfast.

“Good morning,” Hannibal says. He’s already dressed in a neat suit -- impressive, considering Will is a distressingly light sleeper that usually can’t sleep through a stiff breeze outside, let alone another human person moving around the room, getting out of bed and getting dressed. Let alone an unfamiliar person in an unfamiliar place. 

“Morning,” Will says, grabbing the coffee with both hands.

“How did you sleep?”

“Well, actually.” Will _did_ sleep well, something that happens infrequently. “I need to get going soon, though,” he adds, reluctant. The downside of going on a date on a Wednesday night is that Thursday morning follows. Thankfully he doesn’t have class until ten, but even still, traffic between Baltimore and Washington will be a bear. Will needs to get home, let out his dogs, change, and then get down to Quantico. And Will knows _exactly_ what kind of traffic he’s going to hit around Occoquan. 

“Do you work on site at Quantico?”

“Yeah.”

Hannibal nods. “That will be a long drive in rush hour traffic. But first, breakfast, if you can spare the time,” Hannibal says, plating eggs.

“Of course.” 

Will really _should_ get on the road, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to. Instead, he takes both his own and Hannibal’s coffees to the table, while Hannibal carries the plates. 

“I just now realized that while I’ve assumed, I have not asked: do you live in the Baltimore area?”

“No, I live in Wolf Trap, Virginia.”

Will sets the other coffee down where Hannibal sat last night, then takes his previous seat. The room looks different, in the light of day. Starker. Less sensual, but somehow not any less Hannibal. 

“Next time we can go somewhere in your area. I do not wish to keep you far from home.”

Will takes a bite of the eggs and makes an involuntary noise of pleasure. Will has cooked himself eggs a thousand times in his life, and they’ve never even remotely tasted like _this._

Will realizes, too, that their full-disclosure conversation from last night missed out on a few key features of Will’s life. 

“You should probably know in advance that I have seven dogs,” Will says. “And my house is….”

How can Will describe his lifestyle? And to someone like Hannibal? How does he explain that he has a large two story house (one that’s too big for him and still smaller than Hannibal’s) but that he closed off the upper level when he moved in and keeps his bed in the living room instead? It’s not that he thinks Hannibal will judge him, per se -- Will’s threadbare house and unreasonable number of dogs pales in comparison to his mental state -- but it’s still not something that he wants Hannibal to be surprised by. 

“Let me guess,” Hannibal says with a grin, “something modest, in a million-dollar neighborhood.”

Will laughs, relieved. “I think the technical term is a _tear down,_ if you were to ask a real estate agent.”

The house is bigger than any place Will has ever lived, but is still half the size, _at best,_ of his neighbor’s mansions. Will doesn’t know what to _do_ with that much space. It probably says something about him, that instead, he closed up the unused space and pretends that it doesn’t exist. 

Probably. 

“But it satisfies you.”

“It’s small,” because Will makes it small, “but I don’t need a lot of space. And it has a couple of acres of property backing up to national parkland, which is more than I could ask for in this area.”

“And how did you come to possess such a property?”

“I inherited it. My great uncle passed away without any other family and left it to me. At the time I was looking for an excuse to leave New Orleans and start fresh somewhere, so I packed up my dogs and came up here.” 

Will finishes up his food in a few large bites, enjoying the quiet morning but hyper aware of the slow crawl awaiting him between Baltimore and Wolf Trap. 

“I would love to stay longer, but….”

“But you have to go. I understand. Let me walk you to the door.”

Will continues drinking his coffee all the way to the front door, finishing it off in one final gulp before handing the empty cup to Hannibal, who looks amused. 

“Are you free Saturday?” Will asks, lingering in the entryway even though he really, really needs to leave.

Hannibal thinks, for a moment. “I can be.”

Something in Hannibal’s tone says that he actually isn’t free, but will cancel whatever plans he has in favor of seeing Will again. 

“Saturday, then,” Will says. “I’ll get back to you with the details.”

And then he’s kissing Hannibal and dashing out the door. 

__________

Thursday night, Will digs item-by-item through his closet, trying to find something suitable to wear. Everything he has is too loose, too stained, or too... plaid. Will stands in front of his pile of clothes in disgust. Why did he even let his wardrobe _get_ like this? He takes his best options -- a green button-down that's seen better days, and a slightly threadbare sweater that was nice, once -- and lays them out for consideration. 

Friday, he considers.

Saturday morning, Will throws his hands up and goes to a fancy men's clothing store and lets the enthusiastic sales associate dress him up like a doll. He ends up at the register with a pile of tight fitted shirts and very flattering slacks that the sales guy called _hot professor chic_ and tries not to grimace at the total. 

  
  


Saturday evening, Will takes Hannibal to the Wolf Trap Center for Performing Arts’ _Chamber Music at the Barns._ The show is good, not that it’s anything Will would have chosen to go to on his own, and he’s utterly unsurprised to find that Hannibal knows three other people in attendance, as well as the violinist. 

  
  


Will takes Hannibal home with him. Hannibal doesn’t even blink at the bed in the living room; he holds his hand out for the dogs to sniff, peruses Will’s fly tying desk, and declines a cup of coffee. 

Hannibal has a single-minded sort of focus. Hannibal strips him, gets Will on his hands and knees on the middle of the bed, rims him until he cries, and then he fucks him until Will barely remembers the middle-of-the-road sex he’s had the rest of his life. 

__________

Watching Hannibal cook always makes for a beautiful production.

Alana leans back against the counter, beer in hand, and allows the accented sound of Hannibal's voice slide over her as he talks about one of his more obnoxious patients. He's not asking for advice, and she's not offering -- this is what counts as small-talk in their circles, and Hannibal is half-distracted by the ornamental flowers he's arranging out of thinly-sliced meat, anyway. 

Hannibal steps back from his creation and surveys it critically, ever the perfectionist. He adjusts one piece, adds a garnish, adjusts again. 

"How is the beer?" he asks, delicately tucking herbs between the florets, "is it to your liking?"

"It's incredible." The beer _is_ incredible -- smooth and hoppy, with just a hint of a full-bodied red to charm the palette. "I can't believe you managed to find the time to brew beer, along with everything else that you do."

"I can count myself very lucky, as someone with both an abundance of creativity and the free time to accommodate it." Finally satisfied, Hannibal picks up his glass of wine and turns to face her. "You, on the other hand, have been quite busy as of late."

"Sorry about that. I know I've canceled -"

"It's already been forgotten," he interrupts. "I am not concerned for my time, but for yours."

"Work's been hectic."

Between seeing patients, lecturing, and working for Jack, Alana's so stretched-thin that sometimes she expects to look in the mirror and see herself transparent. 

_Moisturize me, moisturize me!_ she thinks. 

"So it's work that has you distracted this evening?"

Alana smiles at the man in front of her -- a colleague, a mentor, and a friend. The first time she met him, she had been tongue-tied and dumb with it. She had been determined to prove herself to him, to this older, sophisticated gentleman, with old-world charm and enough charisma to fill an entire room. Part of her always assumed she would eventually sleep with him. Not during their mentor-ship, but... later, maybe, when both of their lives were in order. 

Yet she's here, now, in his house, drinking his beer -- and beyond that physical attraction, all she feels is a deep fondness for having Hannibal in her life. 

"No," she says eventually, "but work is an excellent distraction from other avenues of thinking."

"And what avenues are you trying to distract yourself from traveling?"

Talking about her feelings has never been Alana's strong suit. Ironic, perhaps, for a psychiatrist. 

Hannibal's hair is shot through with streaks of grey, now, and the wrinkles around his eyes speak of a life well-lived. How easy would it be, to fall into him?

And why does she never seem to take the easy road?

"Why have we never dated?" she asks, instead of answering.

Hannibal's eyes lighten in amusement and understanding. "I suppose we have never concurrently been at the correct time in our lives." No denial -- she knows that he's attracted to her, just as he knows that she's attracted to him. "You should know that I am currently seeing someone."

The oven beeps, and Hannibal puts down his glass in favor of an oven mitt. 

"I'm not propositioning you, Hannibal. It's just a topic that's been on my mind lately -- attraction, and potential, and how or why we choose to act on that potential. Or choose not to." Hannibal pulls something fragrant and steaming from the oven. "You're one of the few people that I feel like I can talk to about this without things getting personal."

"Human sexuality is extraordinarily complex, as you well know." Hannibal says, neatly transferring the food from the roasting pan onto two dinner plates. 

"It is." Alana takes another sip of beer. "Anything I can help with?"

"I appreciate the offer, but no, this is nearly finished." Hannibal whisks the contents of a bowl on the counter, and then drizzles it over the steaming dish. "You have something specific on your mind. Some _one_ specific, perhaps."

Alana shrugs. Thinks about the things she _knows_ she should do, the things she's been pointedly avoiding doing. 

"I give myself very good advice," she sing-songs, "but I very seldom follow it."

"The unofficial motto of most psychiatrists, I find. Myself included." Hannibal lifts the platters, one in each hand, so Alana grabs his wine glass and carries it into the dining room. Hannibal sets the food down on the table and dutifully tells her what he's made -- in French, a language that she doesn't speak -- and he serves them both before finally sitting down with a flourish. "For a better answer to your earlier question, I believe that attraction and romantic potential are fluid, and change throughout our lives. Attraction does not necessarily mean potential, and potential does not necessitate attraction. The right person at the wrong time can be the wrong person."

"So we have the attraction, but not the potential."

"To take an inverse of Michel de Montaigne’s famous line _parce que c'était lui; parce que c'était moi,_ I would say: not with the me that I am now, and not with the you who you are currently."

Alana pauses for a moment. "I like that," she says. 

"And yet I am not the one who occupies your thoughts."

Alana takes a bite of her meal and can't help the soft noise of disbelief. "Hannibal, this is incredible, as always."

"Thank you." 

Hannibal could take that opportunity to talk about the dish, or how he sourced the meat, or a dinner party that he's planning -- but he doesn't. He's waiting for her to answer, because he's a great psychiatrist, and he's not going to let her off easy unless she directly tells him to. 

"Men are... tiresome," she says finally. "And women... are complicated."

"And are you trying to uncomplicate your life?"

"I'm trying _not_ to complicate it."

Hannibal nods in understanding. "But who are we, if not creatures of complication?"

"Who are we indeed?"

Alana eats a few bites of her food, giving them both a break to enjoy the masterpiece in front of them. 

"Have you ever met someone," she asks finally, "someone that you look at and within a few seconds you just... know?"

"Are you speaking of love at first sight?"

Alana shakes her head. "I don't believe in love at first sight. It's... the me that I am, and the her that she is. Like puzzle pieces, that you can just _tell_ will fit together, if only you'll let them."

"Yes. In fact, that is precisely the circumstance I have found myself in." Hannibal looks at her shrewdly. "Why won't you allow your puzzle to be assembled?"

"Sometimes the pieces don't fit into the bigger picture," she says with a wry smile, "no matter how well they match one another."

"Perhaps you need to paint yourself a new picture."

Alana laughs -- Hannibal _would_ suggest that. 

"I can't control someone else's life." Alana takes a deep sip of her beer. "Are you in love?"

"Not yet. But I will be," Hannibal says with casual certainty. 

Alana has a hard time picturing Hannibal in love. He's always been a somewhat solitary creature.

"Are you?" 

"No." Alana doesn't even have to think about her answer. A ringlet of dark hair creeps into her mind, along with the curve of a hip, the sweet smell of perfume, the bow of delicately rouged lips. "But I could be."

"Well then here's to love," Hannibal says, raising his glass, "in all the unexpected ways we may find it."

__________

"I'm nervous," Will admits. He's sitting in the passenger seat of Hannibal's Bentley, on the way to the Baltimore Opera House for Will's second time there, first time showing up on Hannibal's arm. 

"There is no need for nerves. Many of these people you have met before, and I believe your last sojourn to the opera went rather well, did it not?" Hannibal says, taking one hand off the wheel and giving Will's knee a reassuring squeeze. 

Last time, Hannibal did make some introductions, so the situation, could, admittedly, be worse. And Will _did_ actually manage to tag along with Hannibal for the rest of the evening without embarrassing himself. Hannibal introduced him to each group by saying _Will is new to the opera, so we all must be on our best behavior to ensure that he returns,_ accompanied by a charming wink. He then immediately changed the subject to this person's daughter's wedding planning, or that person's new summer home. And, being the person that he is, everyone followed Hannibal's lead and allowed the subject of conversation to avoid Will, entirely. 

That won't work a second time, Will knows. Last time, he was an anomaly, a stranger barely worthy of gossip beyond _does anyone know that man?_ But this time? This time Will is showing up _with_ Hannibal. They will sit together, socialize together, and leave together. People will be -- interested. Gossipy. Sizing Will up, measuring him against Hannibal and finding him wanting. God forbid anyone recognizes his name. Hopefully Hannibal is the only Tattlecrime reader in attendance. 

“A man once walked onto a plane with a loaded gun by placing it in the basket with his wallet and keys. Airport security assumed, that because he wielded it openly and confidently, that he was allowed to have it. They returned it to him and sent him on his way.”

"Your advice is..." Will frowns, "fake it 'till you make it?"

"The mirrors in your mind can reflect the best of yourself, not just the worst of someone else."

"I'm not great at selling myself."

Last time Will was at the opera, he didn't _care_ what the people thought about him. Now, he does. Now, he doesn't want to embarrass Hannibal, doesn't want Hannibal to second-guess their fledgling relationship. It's _stressful,_ giving a shit what other people think about you. And people are all too often like cats -- they can sense when you want them to like you, and the more you care, the less they _do._

"Your anxiety is a self-fulfilling prophecy," Hannibal says, pulling into the parking garage and gliding towards an empty space.

"What?"

Hannibal puts the car in park, then turns to face Will.

"You give society too much credit for independent thinking -- people will treat you the way you expect to be treated. When you expect disdain, you will receive disdain. When you expect respect, you will receive respect."

"I think it's a little more complicated than that."

"You would be surprised," Hannibal says, looking serious. "Will you try?"

"Yeah," Will finds himself saying, "I can try."

Will spends the show with Hannibal's possessive hand on his thigh. The experience ends up being something of a rigorous mental exercise: half his attention on the show, half his attention on Hannibal's warm, solid hand, and absolutely none of his attention on pink elephants. That's how it's supposed to go, right? Don't think about pink elephants?

Every time Will gets so wrapped up in _not_ thinking about the pink elephant waiting for them after the show is over that he loses track of the performance, Hannibal traces a shape into Will's inner thigh, drawing his attention back to here and now. Will isn't sure how he even _does_ it -- every time Will looks over, Hannibal appears to be so wrapped up in the show that he wouldn't notice a bomb going off. But every time Will recedes into his own head, Hannibal is there, drawing him back out again. 

And again, and again, and again. 

By the time the cocktail hour rolls around, Will feels as jittery as he would after drinking three ill-advised cups of coffee, and he's half-convinced that Hannibal is actually psychic. 

"Don't be the person you fear they will see," Hannibal murmurs into Will's ear. "Be the person that I see when I look at you."

Will looks at Hannibal, and Hannibal looks back, utterly confident. Not at all concerned that Will is about to embarrass him, or do something stupid. Just -- enjoying Will, wanting to share with Will the things that he enjoys. 

"What did you think of the performance?" Hannibal asks at a more regular volume, taking Will's hand and leading him into the fray. 

"I think I would enjoy just about anything, as long as I'm there with you."

Hannibal squeezes Will's hand in response. The words sound sappy as hell, but they're true -- Hannibal's enjoyment of things can be Will's enjoyment, too. He likes being around Hannibal, regardless of what they're doing. 

"Where are we going?" Will asks, once he realizes that they're weaving through the crowd and not just to the bar. 

"There's someone I would like for you to meet."

Hannibal stops only to take two drinks off the tray of a passing waiter, releasing Will's hand in favor of passing off alcohol, which Will accepts gratefully. And then they're stepping into a circle of people Hannibal clearly knows.

"Hannibal!" one of the women exclaims. "So good to see you. And Will," she says, looking at him with an amused glint in her eye, "I see we didn't quite scare you off, last time."

Will has no particular memory of meeting this woman, but he's sure that she's one of the many people Hannibal introduced him to.

Will grins, letting Hannibal's easy confidence slide into place. "I don't scare easily."

"You already know Arlene," Hannibal says, reminding Will of her name. "This is Gregory and Mallory Thompson, Emma Marcoux, and Elaine Peterson." Will follows each name with a handshake, already dreading having to differentiate between the names Arlene, Elaine, and Emma. "Everyone, this is Will Graham."

The last woman -- Elaine, Will reminds himself, _Elaine, not Arlene_ \-- looks sharply at Will, upon Hannibal's introduction.

"Will Graham?" she says, looking at him with narrowed eyes. "Are you the profiler that caught Eldon Stammets?"

Will doesn't allow himself to wince, doesn't allow himself to glare at Hannibal. _There's someone I would like for you to meet,_ he had said, and Will should have known better than to take that comment at face value.

"Yes ma'am," Will responds. 

_So much for anonymity._

Arlene gasps audibly, and Emma puts a shocked hand to her chest, quite literally clutching at her pearls. 

"Well then I am absolutely honored to make your acquaintance," Elaine says, sincere to the point of making Will uncomfortable. "My niece is Gretchen Speck. You saved her life."

Will blinks. He normally doesn't deal with the aftermath -- he catches the killer, sometimes even saves a victim, and then he gets to duck out of the limelight and turn the investigation over to Jack and the rest of the BAU to make arrests and play nice with the press. Will doesn't _do_ this -- talk to victims, or victim's families. He has absolutely no goddamn idea what to say. 

"Will is a brilliant criminal profiler," Hannibal says, putting an arm around Will's waist, "and a terribly modest one."

"A real American hero," Arlene says, eyeing Will with renewed interest. "Hannibal, we can always count on you to surround yourself with the most _incredible_ people."

Will sputters. "I'm not -"

"Like I said," Hannibal winks, "terribly modest. Will spends his time chasing down the most dangerous killers this country has to offer, but to hear him tell the story it's just another day in the office."

The ladies titter. 

Will looks at Hannibal, incredulous, and Hannibal looks back, challenging. Daring Will to step up to the plate, to take control of his narrative. 

"It _is_ just another day in the office," Will says, but with a grin, playing along. 

Hannibal looks around the group with an exaggerated expression of _see what I'm talking about?_

"So do you just travel around the country, catching killers?" Mallory Thompson asks, speaking up for the first time.

"No. Thankfully there aren't enough serial killers out there for that. Most of the time I'm a professor of criminal psychology at Quantico."

"That's one hell of a day job," Gregory Thompson says with a begrudging sort of respect. 

Will can't quite... _believe_ that this conversation is unfolding this way. He's here, he's _part_ of it, he's participating in it, but even still, there's a sense of unreality to the whole thing. 

"Do you make a lot of enemies in your line of work?" Mallory asks.

"Honestly, no," Will says, thinking back over the past months since coming to work for Jack. "I think every killer I've hunted, I've caught." 

Will doesn’t even realize that his statement sounds like the most obnoxious kind of humble bragging until _after_ he says it -- but perhaps his unpracticed nonchalance lends credence to the truth of his words, because the others all look impressed, not annoyed. 

Hannibal _hmm_ ’s, drawing attention back to himself. 

"Well, there is that terrible Lounds woman," Hannibal reminds him.

Will makes a show of rolling his eyes, though the reminder of Freddie Lounds sends a spike of anxiety down his spine. He doesn't want to bring these people's attention to her writing, doesn’t want them to look her up later. 

"Will caught a tabloid journalist sneaking onto and contaminating an active crime scene," Hannibal tells the group. "She's had something of a personal vendetta against Will ever since."

Arlene makes a sound of disgust, and Mallory murmurs _oh how terrible._

Will feels like he should be taking notes. He wouldn’t have brought up Freddie, even _if_ he was trying to charm people all on his own. The idea of drawing attention to her writing only to discredit her -- and with the truth, nonetheless! -- would never have occurred to Will. Hannibal hasn’t lied once. Hasn’t even meaningfully misrepresented the situation, though he implied that Freddie’s reporting on Will’s mental health was done out of vindictiveness. 

But then again, wasn’t it?

"Oh, I saw some of that terrible woman's writing," Elaine says, moue of disgust on her face. "Absolutely ridiculous drivel. It's no wonder she has to _self-publish_ on the _internet,_ instead of writing for somewhere reputable, like the Times."

The others all nod in agreement, like publishing on the internet is the most ridiculous thing they've ever heard of. 

“Is your son still writing for the Washington Post?” Hannibal asks the Thompsons, and the conversation spins away from Will and onto the Thompson’s progeny (graduated from American University summa cum laude) and then Arlene’s granddaughter’s surgical residency (considering Columbia, but hasn’t had her match yet). 

A few other people sidle into the group, introductions are made, and others peel off to catch up with other friends. 

Will’s story -- the _gossip_ \-- spreads around the room, and Will knows that by the next time he comes to the opera, nearly everyone will know who he is. For the first time, that doesn’t bother Will. Instead of the usual _Will catches insane people because he himself is insane,_ the story is instead that of Will, criminal profiler, reluctant hero, cruelly slandered by an odious tabloid journalist in a fit of jealousy. 

All around Will, the whispers are eager, enticed, _impressed._

_That’s_ a first. 

__________

“I went back to the opera,” Will tells Bedelia. 

The bouquet is purple and yellow today, a tall stalk peppered with dozens of violet flowers in the center. There’s something oddly menacing about them, though he can’t quite put his finger on why. 

“On a date, I assume?”

Will nods.

“And how did that go for you?”

Will weighs his words, fully realizing how ridiculous he’s about to sound.

“Turns out, I can go out in public and just pretend to be a normal person,” he says.

“Yes, Will. That is what the vast majority of people do every day.”

__________

"Do you need to call someone?" 

Will blinks. He’s -- at a crime scene? Will blinks again, squeezing his eyes shut and reopening them, as though that will stop the room from spinning. The two Beverly’s in front of him merge into one, two concerned expressions melding into one deeply worried mask. 

“I’m -” _fine,_ Will wants to say, but he can’t seem to get the words out. He had felt a little sore, a little tired, when he woke up this morning. When Jack had called him into work this morning. Now he’s -- something else. Unwell. 

Crashing. 

_Do you need to call someone?_

Beverly probably meant Will's psychiatrist, but he does genuinely want to see Hannibal right now.

"Yeah," Will says, squinting through his discomfort. "I'm just gonna -- step outside."

Heart hammering, stomach rolling, and head pounding, Will doesn't make it very far. 

He gets out the front door and then drops onto the porch steps like his strings have been cut. He wants to stay there, eyes closed. Instead he fishes his cell phone out of his pocket and calls Hannibal. 

Will blinks, and the world tilts dangerously. 

Will blinks, and Beverly is sitting next to him.

Will blinks, and Hannibal is there.

Hannibal crouches down in front of Will, putting them at eye level, and then touches the back of his hand to Will's forehead. With the other hand, he grasps Will's wrist -- taking his pulse. 

"I'm not _that_ kind of sick," Will grouses.

Hannibal ignores him, and moves the hand from his forehead to palpitate Will's throat.

"I believe you are. Your pulse is elevated, you have a fever of at least 102, and your lymph nodes are swollen. Intentionally putting yourself through emotional trauma is rarely wise, but never less so than when your body is also fighting off an infection. You need rest and fluids."

"I have a feeling _you're_ the reason Will’s been so chipper recently,” Beverly says, speaking for the first time. "Beverly Katz." She offers Hannibal her hand.

"Hannibal Lecter."

"If you say Will needs rest, then take him home. Or, you know, wherever." The _to your own home_ is implied. "I'll let Jack know."

"Jack'll be pissed," Will says, rubbing his eyes.

"Let him be. You're not much use to him right now anyway."

__________

Will blinks awake, groggy and feverish. Hannibal sits by his bedside, book in hand, engrossed in reading -- giving Will the rare opportunity to look at Hannibal, without Hannibal looking back. 

Not that there's much Will can _see._ The room pitches unnaturally in light and dark, light and dark, and the _clip clop_ of hooves echoes silently through the open doorway as the stag wanders in, uninvited. Will closes his eyes, sick and tired of visual hallucinations, sick and _tired_ of being sick and tired. He must make some involuntary sound, because when he opens his eyes again, Hannibal is looking at him.

"You're awake."

Will groans. "Am I?"

Behind Hannibal, the stag tosses his head, and for a moment, the antlers line up behind Hannibal's head -- a black crown. 

And then, like that, it's gone. Just Will and Hannibal, alone in the room. Will lets his yes fall closed and focuses on making the world stop spinning. 

A hand presses against Will's forehead. "You still have a slight fever, but you are much improved from yesterday."

"What's wrong with me?" The words come out much weaker than Will had expected they would. He's trembling like a kitten. Prying his eyes back open, he looks over at Hannibal, waiting for an explanation. 

"The flu is the most likely culprit," Hannibal says, "though you would have to be tested for the influenza virus to be certain of that diagnosis."

Will shakes his head against the pillow. "Don't care. 'M not going to the doctor."

"I never suggested that you should."

" _You're_ a doctor."

Hannibal smiles, indulgent. "I am."

"Yeah." Will realizes, belatedly, that he's not making much sense. "What are you reading?"

" _La Volonté de Savoir_."

"Read to me?"

"It's French."

"'S okay. I don't need to understand it, I just wanna hear your voice." Will's elementary knowledge of Creole French won't help him keep up with whatever high-brow stuff Hannibal would be reading, but that doesn't actually matter. Hannibal's voice, Will has found, is very effective at drowning out his nightmares.

_“Mais ce premier survol le montre : il s'agit moins d'un discours sur le sexe que d'une multi plicité de discours produits par toute une série d'appareillages fonctionnant dans des institu tions différentes. Le Moyen Age avait organisé autour du thème de la chair et de la pratique de la pénitence un discours assez fortement uni taire…”_

Will blinks awake to find Hannibal lying stretched out on the bed next to him, on top of the covers, fully dressed but thankfully lacking shoes. With one socked foot flat on the comforter and a sketchbook propped up on his knee, he is the picture of an erudite artist. There’s a drawing taking shape on the paper -- some kind of building, from the look of it, though Will would have to lift his head from where it’s half-buried in the pillow to get a better idea. 

Will lets his eyes drift closed to the repetitive scratching of pencil on paper. 

When Will opens his eyes again, there’s a whole scene sketched out with an impressive level of detail -- enough so that Will can easily tell that it’s a European city, though he would have to get a closer look to make a guess as to where. 

"What," Will starts to mumble, but gets immediately interrupted by a jaw-cracking yawn. "What are you drawing?"

Hannibal glances at Will but doesn't stop his sketch, reaching out and running his fingers through Will's hair with his left hand. "The Duomo. Florence," Hannibal elaborates. "How are you feeling?"

Will takes stock: the floaty sensation of fever is gone, and he no longer feels like he's burning out of his skin, like he’s about to melt into a disgusting puddle of human-goo (and Will does know what that looks like, thanks to a killer who dissolved his victims in acid). His muscles are stiff and sore, and his stomach is still roiling, but he's aware enough to grimace at the greasy helmet of his hair, and the tacky residue of dried sweat on his skin. Not better, but getting there. 

"Like crap. But better than I did."

The hand in Will's hair moves onto his forehead. "Your fever appears to have broken. Do you think you will be able to stomach some soup?"

"Probably," Will grumbles. The thought of food makes Will feel worse, but he knows he needs to eat. Grudgingly. "But what I really want is a shower."

"A hot bath would do more for your sore muscles than a shower will, if you would be amenable."

Hannibal's giant claw-foot bathtub dominates the master bathroom. Will has never been one for lounging in the bath, but even he has given that tub some thought -- had to have, as the thing is literally impossible to ignore. Like everything else in Hannibal’s home and in his life, it’s ostentatious and unapologetically hedonistic. A year ago Will would have scoffed, if he saw that tub at a victim’s house, or in a magazine. Hell, even a month ago he would have found its very presence annoying. Yet, somehow, in Hannibal’s ridiculous house, the mental image of Hannibal taking a long bath, then padding downstairs in a sumptuous bathrobe and reading some ridiculous medical textbook as some light reading is _charming_ instead of appalling. 

Will’s working-class father would be rolling in his grave at the thought.

"I don't think I've taken a bath since I was a child," Will says, "but if you think that would be better…."

Hannibal takes a moment to finish filling in some tiny details on the center building of his drawing, and then sets his sketchbook down on the bedside table. He turns his full attention to Will, when Will tries to sit up. "Stay," Hannibal says, pushing him back down into the pillows with a gentle hand. "Give me a few minutes, and I will come to get you when everything is prepared."

Hannibal gets up and pads into the bathroom, and a few moments later, the sound of running water drifts out from the open door. Will lazes in that space between not-quite-asleep and not-quite-awake until an unexpected hand brushes a lock of hair out of his face.

(Will didn’t even hear Hannibal come back, didn’t hear him move around the room at all.)

“‘M awake,” Will says, though it takes him another few seconds to blink his eyes open. Hannibal looms overhead. Patient. Waiting. 

Will takes a breath, braces himself for being upright, and then tosses back the blanket and attempts to lever himself out of bed on his own. Hannibal is there the moment that he succeeds with a steadying hand around his waist. 

"I'm not an invalid," Will says without any heat, which Hannibal ignores. Hannibal leads him, slow and halting, into the bathroom, and leans him against the counter. The only thing he's wearing is a pair of pajama pants, which are easily shucked and discarded. Will _does_ need Hannibal's stable hand to step into the bathtub without falling -- the bottom of the tub is curved and smooth, and so even with Hannibal's help he accomplishes the move less than gracefully, feet slipping unsteadily along the slick porcelain. 

The lights in the room are dimmed. Soft, and warm, and intimate. 

The bathwater is hot and lightly scented with something woodsy. Cedar, maybe. Steam rises sluggishly from the surface of the water, giving Will’s entire field of vision a hazy sort of glow. Will groans as he sinks down fully, all the way up to his neck, and tilts his head back against the curved edge. He can't remember the last time he took a bath, and he knows for sure he's never taken a bath like _this._ No place he's ever lived has had a tub big enough to fit all of him past the age of fourteen. 

Will thought that lazing in Hannibal's _bed_ was good, but this? This is actually better. 

The shadow of Hannibal that Will can see through his half-closed eyes moves away from the tub, and then back again. "Close your eyes," he says, and Will complies without question, allowing his vision to go dark. 

_Permission,_ he thinks, _not to look. Not to see._

A warm, damp washcloth comes down over his eyes, folded into a strip across his vision like a blindfold. Immediately the red glow through Will’s eyelids goes completely black. 

"Stay here for a few minutes without moving," Hannibal says. "Allow your muscles a chance to relax. I will return in a moment."

Hannibal's footsteps pad away from the tub and out of the bathroom, followed by the distinctive sound of going down the stairs. Will can hear him moving around, this time, and he wonders if Hannibal moves silently on purpose, or if he’s instead making _noise_ on purpose, allowing Will to know that he’s traveling out of earshot. 

Meanwhile Will follows Hannibal's instructions exactly -- he lazes, mostly unmoving, idly wondering about Hannibal, in the hot water of the tub. He would never have thought to put a washcloth over his eyes, but the warm, damp fabric feels incredible. People do this kind of thing in spas, Will knows, even though he's never been to one of those before. The steam rising from the surface of the water has a soporific effect, and by the time Hannibal returns Will can't be sure that he wasn't sleeping. 

Hannibal putters around the room for a few moments, opening drawers and then closing them, opening cabinets and then closing them. Knuckles brush over Will’s jaw, a gentle _hello,_ and then Hannibal removes the washcloth from Will’s eyes. Will blinks blearily up at him, eyes open for the first time in however many minutes. Was it five? Ten? Time has been lurching strangely, zipping forward hours or days, and then skittering to a stop. In some ways it feels like he’s been at Hannibal’s house forever, like he’s always been here, always _belonged_ here. Like he’s always been cared for, and pampered, and has always had someone to pet his hair and tuck him into bed.

(Like Will never suffered, alone, at home and on fire, brain cooking itself. Like he never woke up, disoriented, on his roof, or miles from home. Like he never thought that he was losing his mind completely. Like he had never been abandoned, given up on by the people he was supposed to turn to -- like Jack hadn’t looked at Will like his biggest mistake, only to drag him right back into the field once his infection was gone and his mind was cleared by doctors.)

"How are you feeling?" Hannibal asks.

"Warm," Will says, "but in a good way, this time."

"Good." 

Hannibal's shirtsleeves are rolled up above his elbows, and even though Will has seen him naked, this partial state of undress somehow seems more risque, like a Victorian maiden showing a flash of ankle. Hannibal circles the tub and comes to a stop at the side, close enough that Will could reach out and touch him, if his limbs were working at all. Hannibal dips the washcloth in the warm bathwater, then picks up a fancy-looking bottle of body wash and dispenses some onto the towel. 

Hannibal draws Will’s left arm out of the water, and Will finally clues in to what Hannibal is doing. 

"I can wash myself." 

"I know," Hannibal says simply. 

Hannibal takes to this task as meticulously as he does everything else -- gently massaging up over Will’s shoulder, then back down his bicep, into the crook of his elbow and down to his wrist. He dedicates long, drawn-out moments to scrubbing between each of Will's fingers and around his cuticles. 

Will allows himself to enjoy it. Gives in to it. 

By the time Hannibal meanders all the way around to washing Will's hair, Will is halfway between a coma and a livewire, caught between the conflicting desires to sleep for another full day and jumping Hannibal. He doesn't have the _energy_ to jump Hannibal, but the urge buzzes under his skin, regardless. 

"Sit up," Hannibal says, breaking the silence that has descended over the bathroom.

Will does so. Hannibal tilts Will's head back with a touch under his chin, and then pours water over his head -- one cup, two cups, three -- until Will's hair is thoroughly soaked, then pushes back lightly on Will's shoulder. 

"Lay back."

Will returns to his former position, but this time with his head a little further off the tub. Hannibal lathers shampoo through his hair, rubbing his blunt fingertips over Will's scalp in soothing circles over and over, until Will's toes curl and he's reasonably sure the line has crossed between washing and a decadent massage. Hannibal's hands cradle Will's head, entire. Fingers brushing over his temples, swiping stray hairs out of his face. Lifting his head from the porcelain and trailing fingers down the back of his neck. Scritching over that sensitive patch of skin just under the back of Will's skull, at the top of his spine -- so fragile, there. Vulnerable. Brushing up over the bumps and ridges of his bones, like a phrenologist, mapping. 

Will squirms in the bathwater, wound up with nowhere to go. He’s not hard -- doesn’t think he can _get_ hard, with how exhausted he still is, but he knows that he would be if he could be. Can’t help but think what this would be like, if he were well, if Hannibal were seducing instead of caretaking. 

"Hannibal," he breathes, and Hannibal's fingers comb his hair back and finally come to rest. Will sits up again and Hannibal rinses the shampoo out of his hair, gives it a quick once-over with conditioner -- and then he's carefully helping Will step out of the tub. Hannibal towels him dry, then kneels in front of him with a clean pair of pajama pants; Will balances with one hand on Hannibal's shoulder as he steps into one leg, and then the other, trying not to keel over. His energy hasn't lasted for as long as he thought it would, and even though he's not about to admit it to Hannibal, he can probably only stay upright for another minute or two. 

Not that Will _needs_ to admit it to Hannibal -- Hannibal, who bathes him, dries him, dresses him. Hannibal, who leads him over to the sink and stands sentinel behind him, arms looped around Will's waist, while Will brushes his teeth leaning back against Hannibal’s strong chest. He clearly knows that Will needs the physical support, and just as clearly knows that Will doesn’t know how to ask for it. Hannibal doesn't say anything, he just does. Unquestioningly and without comment. Once Will finishes brushing his teeth, down to his very last bit of energy, Hannibal walks him back to bed and tucks him in. 

The sheets are soft and smell like fresh cotton. Hannibal must have changed them, while Will was soaking in the bath. 

“I have soup heating downstairs,” Hannibal says. 

“‘M tired.”

“I know. I’ll let you rest for a few minutes, but then you really must eat something, to regain your strength.”

Will nods. The last thing he knows, before fading back into sleep’s willing embrace, is the feel of lips pressed against his forehead. 

Will wakes later -- minutes, or hours later -- when Hannibal brings him soup. A regular Florence Nightingale in a three-piece suit. Hannibal bustles about setting up an eating-in-bed table that stretches out over Will's lap, like you'd find in a hospital. 

_Did Hannibal already own this?_ Will wonders. _Did he buy this because of me? For me?_

(Looming large in the back of Will's mind is the enormity of this experience, and the meaning behind it. Staying here, being cared for. The past day (days? How long has it been?) and Hannibal's actions are not the actions of a man on a few casual dates, who is entertaining a brief dalliance. He has bathed Will, fed Will, nursed Will. Will can't quite -- can't quite look at it, head on, yet. Like the blinding, searing light of the sun -- it'll burn Will from the inside out, if he looks too soon. It's -- _serious._ Will has been serious about Hannibal since long before he met the man, but finding that intention reciprocated is -- is, well. Will isn't quite ready to look at that, yet. Isn't quite ready to know what it means. 

Will feels like a child begging wildly for a toy, who's not quite sure what to do with it, once he gets it. The thrill is in the asking, sometimes. The thrill is in reaching, _straining_ for something just out of reach, the thrill is in begging for something that you know you're not allowed to have. The inevitable disappointment. The catharsis of being told no, of having an answer. 

This may be, admittedly, why Will's previous therapists said that he pursues unattainable people so that he never has to confront actually getting what he asks for. 

Maybe.

There's probably, also, something to be said about Will's childhood. Will's father. 

Probably.)

Will doesn't say any of this. Instead, he firmly takes the writhing bundle of emotions tumbling around the back of his mind and crams it into a tiny little box labeled _later,_ and then takes the spoon being handed to him. 

“Silkie chicken in a broth. A black-boned bird prized in China for its medicinal values since the seventh century. Wolfberries, ginseng, ginger, red dates, and star anise.”

Will grins. "Chicken soup?"

"Yes."

"Thank you."

Will eats a few spoonfuls of soup -- delicious, as always. 

"I'm gonna have to call Jack, at some point," he says. He's been living in a bubble, here, in Hannibal's house, but eventually the real world will have to filter back in. In retrospect, he probably should have contacted Jack earlier -- not that he was in any shape to do so. 

"I already called and spoke with Beverly Katz," Hannibal tells him. "I asked her to pass along that you were ill with the flu, and should not be expected back at Quantico until Monday at the earliest."

"Oh." Will should have thought of that... days ago, really. Moments after leaving an active crime scene. In retrospect, he really should have expected some kind of reaction from Jack, but he hasn't been in a place to think of anything at all. "Okay, yeah, that -- that makes sense. And she would have passed that along to Jack."

Jack must be _pissed._ He doesn't take no for an answer on _any_ active crime scene, let alone one where Will was there and then left without saying anything to him. And yeah, Will did just _do_ that. He left an active crime scene, said nothing to Jack... must have said something to Beverly, but his memory of that conversation is spotty at best. 

Will wonders what Jack's gonna say to him, when he gets back to work. The kinds of questions he'll ask. The kinds of questions Will isn't ready to answer. 

There's something else niggling in the back of Will's mind, too, now that he's thinking more clearly. 

"Oh, shit," Will says with a jolt, nearly upending his bowl, "my dogs!"

"I also took the liberty of asking her to tend to your animals." At Will's dumbfounded look, Hannibal continues, "I hope that I've not overstepped."

Beverly doesn't have a key, but Alana does. Beverly wouldn't have accepted responsibility unless she had already worked out the details -- which means she's already talked to Alana, and to Jack. Which means that Will might have a courtroom's worth of questions to answer, when he gets back.

Great. 

"Thank you," Will says, because Hannibal went out of his way to take care of all of the things that Will didn't have the presence of mind to do himself. It's not Hannibal's fault that Will hasn't bothered to let anyone at work know anything about his personal life. 

"No thanks are necessary."

"No, really, I... I appreciate it." This time, the words come out completely sincere. "I really do."

Will isn't accustomed to anyone playing nursemaid. His father was never one for coddling, and his most recent bout with encephalitis was something that he had to take care of completely on his own. He wouldn't have even been able to say that being _taken care of_ while sick was something that he wanted -- 

Will shuts the door on that line of thinking, again.

_Later._

"And I appreciate your trust in me," Hannibal says. At Will's baffled look, Hannibal elaborates. "Being vulnerable around someone new takes courage." Hannibal takes Will's spoonless left hand in his own. "You called me while your mind was in an altered state. As someone who works with the worst that society has to offer, that you trusted me in your time of need is not something that I shall overlook."

And here Will had been thinking that he took advantage of Hannibal's hospitality. 

"Eat your soup," Hannibal says, brushing his thumb over Will's knuckles. "And then rest. I did not intend to spring a serious conversation on you in this state."

Will squeezes Hannibal's hand -- a wordless recognition -- and then takes another sip. 

Then another, and another, until the soup is done.

__________

"Is Will gay?"

Alana blinks at Jack, but the expression on his face -- like an expectant but forgiving principal who just caught you smoking behind the bleachers -- doesn’t change.

"Not that I know of."

Jack nods, a semi-sarcastic motion that says _that’s an answer, but not the one that I want._

"Is he sick again?"

Now _that_ question has Alana more concerned. 

"Not... that I know of," she says slowly. "Why? What is this about?"

"Will was removed from a crime scene yesterday. By a _male_ doctor. Katz says that Will called him, but she was less-than-forthcoming on the details. And I don't know of any doctors that do that kind of house-call."

Will has never given Alana the name of his psychiatrist (too small a circle, he says, and he’s definitely right) but the one thing that she does know is that Will’s psychiatrist is a woman. That doesn’t rule out a medical doctor, but… 

"If Will is seeing a doctor, he hasn't said anything to me about it. And if Will is _seeing_ a doctor, he hasn't said anything to me about that either."

Jack nods again, paternalistic disappointed-principal expression firmly on his face. 

"If he's sick again,” he says firmly, “I need to know about it."

"I don't know anything, Jack."

"But even if you did, you wouldn't tell me. So.” Jack leans forward over his desk, hands clasped, propped up on his elbows. “If he's sick again, I need to know."

Alana maintains eye contact, unblinking. 

So does Jack. 

"I'll keep an eye on him."

__________

  
  


The next time Will sees Bedelia, he spends almost thirty unprompted minutes rambling about his childhood, his father, his lowered expectations from other people, otherness and perceptions of normalcy, social isolation, and, finally, a pathological aversion to kindness. Through it all, Bedelia says nothing. She just watches him, expression neutral, as he paces and gesticulates around the room, a whirlwind of frenetic energy. 

The thoughts have been percolating for days, waiting for the chance to lob them at Bedelia for some proper perspective. 

Bedelia waits, silent but observing, until Will drops back into his chair, his hands spread out before him as if to say _now it's your turn, what does this all mean?_ before she bothers to say anything at all. Her eyes flick over him -- from his lightly-styled hair to his neat sweater and fitted slacks -- before coming to rest on his face.

"And how does that make you feel?"

Will snorts, slightly disbelieving. That snort turns into a giggle, and then into a full-blown laugh, where he tilts his head back and lets a little bit of the hysteria he's feeling out. 

"That makes me feel..." Will says, eyes still on the ceiling, "...like... a fraud."

"Your emotional isolation in childhood makes you feel like a fraud as an adult."

Bedelia doesn't intone her words like a question, but Will knows that either she isn't picking up his threads of thought, or she's pretending not to so that she can force him to explain what he means directly. 

"I am in a relationship with someone who is very... solicitous of my wants and needs," Will says, choosing his words carefully. "And I entered into that relationship under false pretenses, which I have not told him about, and do not intend to tell him about. _That_ makes me feel like a fraud." 

"Your emotional isolation as a child made you resistant to emotional connections as an adult, and now that you find yourself developing one, you are concerned that it is somehow disingenuous, and that your feelings are invalid. That your damage, as a child, somehow precludes you from making meaningful and lifelong connections as an adult. Faced with the possibility that your assumptions are incorrect, or the possibility that you are growing and healing emotionally, instead you have chosen to interpret that you are faking this emotional connection."

" _My_ feelings aren't invalid. But I cheated. I knew things about him that I shouldn't have known. _Wouldn't_ have known, if I hadn't been... told."

Bedelia says nothing -- just waits.

"You said that I was falling in love with the _idea_ of a person, before," he continues. "And you weren't wrong. But now I have a real person in front of me, and those feelings aren't abstract anymore. But the foundation is... rotten." The words tumble out without prior thought, and yes, okay, Bedelia's method of _making_ him explain usually brings them around to another subject, entirely. "The foundation is rotten," he repeats. "How do I... how do I build on that? How do you build a home on quicksand?" Will shakes his head, words speeding up. "I should have listened to you, before. You said that it was a bad idea, and I was so busy imagining what I _could_ have that I never thought about what I _would_ have. I didn't even _think -_ "

"Will," Bedelia interrupts.

"- I didn't really think that I would end up here. Even with you saying that he could _handle me,_ I still didn't think it would last more than one or two dates -- they almost never do. I never thought I would have to confront the, the _reality_ of what I've done."

"Will."

"And that's a thing that I've _done,_ isn't it? I deceived someone. I lured someone into a romantic relationship under false pretenses, lied to him, and then what? Thought that we could continue on like that forever? I should have -"

"Enough." Bedelia's words ring out loud enough that Will's mouth snaps closed. "You're spiraling. Unproductively, I may add."

Will nods, takes his glasses off and rubs his eyes with a shaking hand.

"I stand by the assessment I gave you all those months ago, about your vulnerability, and your aversion to vulnerability." Bedelia cocks her head. "I could have told you that the key to a successful romantic relationship would be to embrace that vulnerability. I could have told you that it was obvious to me that you wanted to be taken care of, and that a successful romantic relationship would require you to allow yourself to be taken care of. I could have told you any number of things. Would you have listened?"

"No," Will says hollowly, looking at his knees. "Probably not."

"No. Probably not." Bedelia lets the repeated words stretch out in stillness for a few long moments. "How sure are you," she says, "that I gave you the profile of a real, live, person, and not a falsified example of what you should be looking for in a romantic partner?" Will, admittedly, hadn't thought of that as a possibility until this very moment. "Would that change your feelings?"

Will thinks back, to the weeks and months between when Bedelia first mentioned her patient, and when he went to the opera. Sure, she could have lied to him. But if she had, she would have admitted it far, far earlier, while he was still driving her crazy asking questions. It would have been far, far easier for her to say that the man didn't exist, and that he was merely an outline of what Will _should_ be pursuing in romantic relationships. Instead, she demurred. She changed the subject, she became terse, she became irritable. She wouldn't have reacted that way to a lie. She would have had no reason to. 

Bedelia gave him a profile of a real person, and then she regretted it.

"He's real," Will says, sure. 

"That wasn't my question."

Will frowns. "Wasn't it?"

Bedelia sighs -- a small, barely perceptible huff of air. 

"You and I are both aware, that the profile I gave you is based on a real person. My question, to you, is whether or not you would feel the same way about him now, if it wasn't."

Will does his best to bring order to the rattling cage of ferrets in his brain right now. It's hard. Harder than it should be, to think in hypotheticals, to try to look at his feelings outside of himself. _If_ Bedelia hadn't given him the information she did... _if_ he had met Hannibal under normal circumstances.... 

Impossible to say. Will would never have acted the way that he had. Instead of his normal wary-ness, his typical aloof anxiety, he jumped into his relationship with Hannibal like a running cannonball off a dock, without checking the water temperature first. Bedelia had screened him first, in a way, and so he could trust in that. 

"I went into the relationship like I was looking for a - " Will trips over the word, " - a husband."

"Many people do. That is, after all, the primary purpose of dating."

Will winces. That's true, of normal people, but Will _isn't_ normal people. He doesn't do what he did, and so it's different -- but he knows that he'll sound self-centered, if he says that.

"You feel that, while this is totally normal behavior for others, in yourself it is a sign of disingenuousness. And that," she says, "fundamentally alters the foundation of your relationship with Jacques."

Will opens his mouth to argue, but then the rest of her statement filters through his mind and he snaps it shut again. 

"My what?" he says.

"We have been," she says, "avoiding saying names. But in this instance, our conversation is best carried out directly."

Will takes a deep breath, mind racing. 

"I want you to take a moment and think about that. I suggested to you that Jacques would be a complimentary match, for your not-insignificant emotional needs. But you are the one who actually built a relationship with him, and developed that relationship to such a point that you're concerned for its future. Was that my doing? Or was that yours? At what point do you take ownership? Don't answer me. Think."

Will nods, but he doesn’t think. Instead, that one word echoes through his mind:

Jacques. 

_Jacques._

_JACQUES._

“You’re not thinking, you’re spiralling. I want you to think, about the small handful of details I told you, and whether or not they fundamentally change anything about your relationship as it is now.”

What had Bedelia told him, really? A little about her patient's state of mind, a little about his hobbies, and a straightforward assessment of his financial situation inasmuch as it related to the other aspects of the man's life. Will hadn't really bothered trying to sleuth out whether Hannibal was the correct man or not -- but he probably _should_ have. Surely there was more than _one man_ in the entire opera's audience who was a rich doctor who liked to cook. Hannibal had just... _fit._ Will had taken one look at the man and he could see the exact shell of a person Bedelia had described, so he didn't bother talking to anyone else. 

(Will had taken one look at the man and _wanted_ him, _liked_ him in a way that Will wasn’t used to. Will had looked at Hannibal and seen a partner, and hadn’t thought to look any further.)

Maybe Will should have pressed for details, about Hannibal's childhood, about his lineage. But what could he have done? Asked about childhood trauma and minor nobility with a complete stranger? That would have been insane, even for Will's admittedly weak interpersonal skills. 

The only _truly_ identifying information Bedelia gave him.... 

Will frowns. Bedelia actually didn't give him _any_ identifying information. Childhood abandonment issues, art, opera, music, cooking. A classic renaissance man, sure, but there was surely more than one person who could have fit that bill at the opera. The only surefire thing he knew, in the beginning, was that Hannibal is a psychiatrist -- but surely there is a higher than average concentration of psychiatrists in the cultural scene of Baltimore's elite. 

Stupid. 

Will had chosen Hannibal because he was the only interesting person he had spoken with that night. Will _kept_ seeing Hannibal because he's interesting, and finds Will interesting in kind. 

_Does_ it matter that he's not Bedelia's patient?

Will clears his throat. "It doesn't change anything." Will's feelings for Hannibal are quite separate from the desperate longing he felt for Bedelia's hypothetical patient. They're real, for one. Based on actions, instead of fantasies. Based on who Hannibal _is,_ instead of who he could be. 

"And did that information," she asks, "actually, _meaningfully,_ change the way that you were able to interact with him? Not your behavior. I know that it changed your behavior. Was there anything that you said, or did, that you _could not_ have done without the information I provided to you?"

Will wouldn't have acted the way that he did -- but that's not to say that he _couldn't_ have, if he was dating, if he was open. Will thinks back over the dates and weeks and phone calls, and finds... nothing. He had a better idea of what Hannibal might have been looking for in a partner, _maybe,_ but Will didn't pretend to be someone that he's not -- he just leaned on a more open, emotionally available side of himself. Will took a risk that he otherwise would never have considered -- but other so-called "normal" people take that risk every day. 

"No."

"Did I genuinely tell you anything that you, a profiler, could not have figured out for yourself with a several minutes' observation, and a few conversations with people around you?"

Will shakes his head. He had known immediately that Hannibal was intelligent, wealthy, held people at arms' length, and generally disdained genuine human connections. He hadn't needed Bedelia to tell him that. 

"So what you're saying is that you did not use the information available to you, to manipulate, lie to, or otherwise deceive your romantic partner."

"No."

"So please explain to me, again, how your relationship with Hannibal is built on rotten foundations."

Will's head spins for the second time in the conversation.

"Hannibal," he says flatly. "Not Jacques."

That cold, amused look glints in Bedelia's eyes, and the pieces all snap together.

"Right," he says, nodding, only half-angry. "Make me panic about dating the wrong guy so that you can demonstrate how unimportant it all really is."

"If you had taken another few minutes to think," she says with a smile, "you would have realized that surely I would have noticed that you were talking, in session, about finding a partner, but that my other patient was not."

Will sighs. She's right -- there's no way she could possibly have _not noticed_ if Will had started dating the wrong guy.

"You're an asshole."

"Perhaps," she says with a nod of her head. "But I am also correct."

__________

Going back to work ends up being anticlimactic. 

Jack raises an eyebrow. Alana says nothing, in particular. Beverly grins at him like they're friends now. Will waits for the other shoe to drop for about two days and gets absolutely nothing, other than a few suspicious looks from Jack, and general well wishes from those who knew he was legitimately sick. 

That false sense of security carries Will all the way until Thursday, when Beverly corners him and invites him to go _get a drink_ after work, like they’re buddies. 

Like Will’s the kind of guy who goes to _happy hour_.

Saying no would be the best option -- would have been, if Will hadn’t been so surprised that he made vague agreeable noises before he even realized what he was being asked. 

But hey, he might as well, right? Beverly is officially the first coworker to have met Hannibal -- he should probably actually follow up with that, instead of ignoring it. 

So Will gets in his car and instead of going home, he drives to a bar near Quantico, the one that Beverly suggested, and tries his best to come up with whatever the hell he’s going to say to her, when she starts asking questions.

She is going to ask questions, right? They’re not _friends._

Will’s panicky unease fuels him all the way until he gets to the bar and finds Beverly, drink in hand, laughing with the bartender.

“Will!” she says with a wave, as though he hasn’t seen her yet. 

“Hey.”

Will perches on a barstool and orders a beer, which the bartender brings after a few merciful seconds. 

“So,” Beverly says, turning to face him fully.

Will winces and takes a fortifying sip of drink. 

"I don't wanna put you on the spot,” she says, “but I figured I could roll out the unofficial welcome wagon without being _too_ awkward about it."

Will frowns. "What welcome wagon?"

"Well..." Beverly says, "with you on board, I think Jack is the only straight person on the team."

Will blinks in surprise, then takes a sip of his beer to buy a few seconds to think. He had assumed that Beverly had assumed, correctly, about him and Hannibal, but Will honestly hasn't spent much time speculating about the personal lives of his coworkers. He never thought they would _judge_ him for his choice in partners, but still -- _all of them?_

"Really?"

"Yes, really." 

Beverly cocks her head and looks at him, a slightly different twist on a familiar expression. Typically when people look at Will like that, _I don't understand you_ blares out from their body language -- with Beverly, her look reads more like she doesn't quite _get_ Will, but would like to. 

To put it much more simply, she looks curious, but friendly. 

"You know, for someone whose job it is to understand people, you're not very observant."

Will laughs. "No, I guess I'm not. Didn't Zeller sleep with Freddie Lounds a while back?" That, at least, he had noticed. 

"Yeah, he and Price have an on-again-off-again thing that's been going on for years. You can always tell the status of their relationship based on how much they're bickering."

"Do they bicker more when they're broken up?"

Beverly shakes her head. "Together. It's all polite silences when they're on the outs. Awkward for everyone involved."

Will thinks back over the past year of working with them, and suddenly their dynamic makes a lot more sense.

"They've been driving Jack crazy with all their sniping," he says, and it's true -- they've been in rare form these past few weeks, arguing about little things and generally making a nuisance of themselves to everyone around them. 

"Well, they've also been showing up to work together every day for at least a month, so..."

"Huh."

Will takes a sip of his drink and tries not to seem as out-of-sorts as he _feels._ He's never _done_ this before. He's never been invited to drinks with a coworker, to talk about the people he works with. Occasionally he would get a _'we're all going out for drinks, wanna come?'_ that was clearly not intended to be anything more friendly than a last-minute invite, or the even-less-frequent email to join in happy hour. Will has never gone to those before. Never bothered. Didn't seem that they really wanted him there any more than he wanted to be there. 

"I'm really not trying to gossip," she says, "I assumed that you knew about them already. But I suppose you have bigger things to worry about."

"That's a very polite way of saying that I don't pay attention to my surroundings."

"You said it," she laughs, "not me. Anyway, I just wanted to get you on the same page, you know? You're a really private guy and I respect that. But you're also not alone," she lifts her glass, "so cheers."

"I didn't realize we were so obvious. Not that I'm trying to hide anything, just..." he trails off. 

"To a stranger you would have seemed close. But to someone who knows you? Blinking neon sign over your head. Bells, whistles, fireworks, the whole nine yards."

Will groans and tips his head back. "Did I do something stupid that I don't remember?"

"Nah. You just -- you have a bubble. A _big_ one. You broadcast that you don't want anyone in your personal space all the time, and you generally flinch when people touch you. The fact that you actually called someone at all was a surprise in and of itself, honestly. But then he actually showed up and just got right in there, you know? Very touchy, in a casually intimate way."

Will's memories of that day are still hazy, but he still has the sense-memory of Hannibal kneeling between his legs, Hannibal's hand cupping his face. At the time Will was so grateful for Hannibal's presence that he didn't even consider how it must have looked to others. 

"Yeah," Will says, lacking anything better to keep the conversation going. 

"Can I ask questions, or will that totally freak you out?" Beverly has one elbow on the bar, chin propped on her hand. 

"That depends. Is this an interrogation?" Will is mostly joking. Mostly.

"This?" Beverly raises an eyebrow. "This is friendly chit chat. You know what that is, right?"

"I think I've read about that."

“You want another drink?” she asks, gesturing at Will’s nearly-empty pint glass.

“Yeah, actually,” Will says, surprised to find that he means it, “I do.”

__________

“Is there anything you want?” Will asks one night, in bed, just long enough past the afterglow as to not be completely obnoxious but before he could fall asleep.

“Hmm?” 

Their sex life is something that’s been on Will’s mind. Those first few weeks, talking about sex was literally the _last_ thing Will wanted to do. The conversation would surely have focused on his own inexperience with men, and Will just wanted to push through any awkwardness _without_ having to say the words _I’ve never had sex with a man before._

The strategy worked, though -- Hannibal didn’t ask any questions past that first time, and seemed to understand without being told that Will wanted to keep mum on the subject. Not the healthiest plan. Hell, maybe not even the safest plan. But it’s what they did, and that seems to have worked out relatively well so far. Now that Will’s had enough spins around the maypole to have a grasp on the mechanics, he has… not a _concern,_ per se, just a sense that there are things he could be doing _better._

Mostly, it seems like his role in bed is to let Hannibal have him any way he wants him, which is great, for Will, but also feels a bit unequal. 

Will props himself up on one elbow so that he can look at Hannibal.

“You know, is there anything that we haven’t done that you’re interested in? Anything… lacking?”

“I am quite content, though I am open to suggestion, if there’s something on your mind.”

Will tries to put words to the unnamed feeling tumbling around in the back of his head. He doesn’t _think_ it’s coming from himself -- he thinks the restlessness is coming from Hannibal, he just can’t quite put his finger on what the cause might be.

“Would you like to switch?” Hannibal guesses. 

“Would _you_ like to switch?” 

Hannibal has proven to be rather bossy in bed -- to Will’s utter lack of surprise.

“It’s not my preference, but I’m not opposed.”

Will snorts. “Then no. I mean, sure, maybe one day, but I’m not… that’s not important to me.” Will looks at Hannibal, and Hannibal looks back. “I feel like there’s something that you want,” he says finally. “Something we haven’t done. If I’m wrong, you can tell me that, but I can’t shake the feeling that there _is_ something.”

Hannibal reaches out and tucks a piece of hair away from Will’s face. 

“How would you feel about forgoing condoms?” Hannibal asks.

Will blinks. “Sure. I was tested pretty recently and I, uh, haven’t had any other… _opportunity_ for infection, so I can get you a copy of my records.” 

When Will was sick they tested him for every single thing under the sun, it seems like, so the only upside to the encephalitis was a clean bill of health in every _other_ aspect of his life. 

“That won’t be necessary,” Hannibal says. “Oral sex without a condom has already exposed me to any infections that you may have had.”

And yeah… Will hadn’t really thought about that. Hannibal has always been diligent about condom use for penatrative sex, though he eagerly put his mouth on Will’s cock without one. 

“And besides,” Hannibal continues, “I trust you. If you tell me that you’ve been tested recently I don’t require proof of it. I, on the other hand, am overdue. It’s been some time, and while I have no symptoms of infection, that does not guarantee me a clean bill of health.”

“You should have said something. About the… oral sex thing.” Will can’t even imagine Hannibal saying the word _blowjob._

Hannibal grins. “I am rather unwilling to trade pleasure for safety.”

Will raises an eyebrow.

“My own,” Hannibal elaborates, “not yours. I don’t care much for the taste of latex, and certainly not when it’s at the expense of tasting you.”

Even though Will suspected that to be the case, hearing Hannibal’s bald words makes Will flush. Hannibal grins wickedly at the red that Will can feel staining his cheeks. 

“So you want to come inside me,” Will says. “Anything else?”

“Have I given you the impression of dissatisfaction?”

Will flops onto his back so that he doesn’t have to look at Hannibal anymore.

“No,” he says honestly. “You’re just very, uh, generous, with your attention. I want to make sure you’re enjoying yourself as much as I am.”

Hannibal sucks Will’s cock and licks his ass with absolute enthusiasm, and then fucks him into a coma pretty much every time. It’s a _lot,_ in a good way, but _god…_ half the time Will feels like he can barely keep up, and he’s usually just clinging to sanity and trying not to pass out from how good he feels. Will has had his fare share of unenthusiastic sex -- not _bad_ , per se, but doing something that he doesn’t love for a partner who does. He doesn’t want that for Hannibal -- he wants to be sure that Hannibal is getting as much out of their sex life as he is. 

“Your enjoyment is my enjoyment,” Hannibal says. 

_Are you as honest in your enjoyment as you are in your displeasure?_

“A feedback loop,” Will murmurs. Will enjoys Hannibal’s enjoyment, too. 

“Mmm.”

Hannibal brushes a hand over Will’s chest, thumbs one of his nipples. Even spent, Will can’t help but shiver. 

“You’re very responsive,” Hannibal says, voice like gravel. 

“Can’t help it.” 

“I know.”

Hannibal rolls on top of Will and replaces his hand with his mouth, teeth worrying over the peaked nub. Will gasps, hands settling on Hannibal’s head -- not grabbing, just anchoring. Will isn’t hard, won’t _get_ hard again, but the sensation is still nice. Hannibal bites a line of kisses from Will’s nipple up to his neck. 

“I like the way you sound when you’re overwhelmed,” Hannibal says. 

Will huffs. “You overwhelm me a lot.”

“I know.”

Hannibal shifts his weight so that he’s kneeing between Will’s legs, then sits back on his heels, looking down at Will’s body hungrily. 

“I’m not twenty anymore,” Will says, and he’s _not._ He’s pushing forty -- his days of barely going soft between rounds one and two are long behind him and aren’t coming back without pharmaceutical intervention. And Hannibal isn’t hard, either, so… 

Hannibal leans forward and presses a kiss to Will’s chest, then to his lower sternum, then his abs, trailing a purposeful line. 

“Hannibal…” Will whines, but spreads his legs to give more room, regardless. Hannibal presses an open-mouthed kiss to the head of Will’s soft cock. “I need an hour. Half an hour, at least.”

Hannibal’s hands come to Will’s thighs, spreading them just the way he wants them, and then he hovers over Will’s cock again.

“Shall I stop?”

Will swallows, shakes his head. 

Hannibal mouths at Will’s cock, gently, but even the soft sensation is _a lot._ There’s a click of a bottle, and then a finger rubbing over Will’s hole, still loose and wet from a little while ago. How long has it been -- ten minutes? Fifteen? 

Will can’t help the punched-out whine he makes when Hannibal pushes _in._ The finger is gentle but insistent, stroking against Will’s inner walls and brushing up against Will’s prostate. Will gasps and shifts his hips up away from the sensation, but in doing so pushes his cock more firmly against Hannibal’s mouth. 

Will pants, the sound loud in the quiet room. 

Hannibal takes Will’s cock in his mouth and Will just -- rides the knife’s edge between pain and pleasure, where his body can’t quite decide how to interpret the sensations along his nerve endings. Against all odds -- against all probability, against anything Will would have guessed -- he starts to get hard again. It still _hurts,_ kind of, but pleasure seems to be winning the battle. His hips hitch forward, pushing his cock further into Hannibal’s throat, then back against his finger, settling into a jerky, unconscious rhythm. 

Hannibal is _enjoying_ this. It’s not an inherently sexual enjoyment, Will doesn’t think, but there’s a buzz running in a current between them. Pushing Will -- _hurting_ Will without really hurting him -- is doing something for Hannibal. Will giving into Hannibal, letting Hannibal do whatever he wants, is _definitely_ doing something for Hannibal. 

Will can’t -- can’t think anymore, just feels. Jerks forward, and back, forward and back, lurching unsteadily towards climax. 

Coming feels like an electric shock, like a cattle prod to the gut. Will groans and curls up like he’s been punched while Hannibal swallows him down, then pulls off when Will pushes weakly at his head. Hannibal stretches out over Will’s body, careful not to put pressure on the _very oversensitive_ parts of him, and presses a kiss against Will’s mouth. 

Will wraps a hand around the back of Hannibal’s neck to keep him in place.

“It’s about control,” Will murmurs against Hannibal’s lips. “You want me to give you anything. Everything.” Will huffs out a laugh. “You can have it.”

“That’s a dangerous offer.”

“I can take it.”

“And if I hurt you?”

Will bites at Hannibal’s mouth. “Your enjoyment is my enjoyment,” he parrots. “If I want you to stop, I’ll tell you to stop.”

Hannibal tips over and lets himself fall onto the bed next to Will. 

That last orgasm was wretched but good, and it left Will feeling floaty and punch-drunk. Will isn’t sure if Hannibal was trying to prove some kind of point or _what_. 

“You are….” Hannibal trails off, looking at Will like he doesn’t quite know what to make of him. He murmurs, instead, something in another language -- not French, because Will knows enough French to get an idea of what Hannibal’s saying. 

(Even without knowing the language, Will has an idea of what Hannibal might be saying.)

__________

On a dreary Tuesday morning, Jack calls to say that there’s been a Chesapeake Ripper killing -- inside the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. 

“ _Inside_ the hospital?” Will repeats, unsure he could have possibly heard that right, still muzzy with interrupted sleep. 

“Inside,” Jack confirms. 

Will hasn’t worked a Chesapeake Ripper case, yet he would have expected Jack to sound more urgent about it. Excited probably wouldn’t be the right word -- wrong connotations -- but the Ripper is Jack’s white whale. His tone shouldn’t be _resigned._

“So he went…” he says, trying to work out what the hell is going on, “inside the hospital… to kill someone?”

Security inside the hospital is tight, which would make this the Chesapeake Ripper’s boldest kill yet. 

Jack sighs. “No. The victim was a nurse, killed by a patient.”

“A patient of the hospital?”

Will sits up properly and swings his legs over the side of the bed. He runs a hand over his face, shakes his head, and tries to be a little more coherent. 

(Strange dreams kept him up most of the night. Not quite nightmares, not truly, but instead an unsettling dark.)

“Yes, Will, a patient of the hospital.”

Will doesn’t quite know what to say to that, so they sit in silence for a long moment. There are plenty of questions Will could ask -- who is the patient? How long has he been imprisoned there? Could it even _be_ the Ripper? -- but Jack sounds doubtful enough for the both of them. Any murder that fits the Chesapeake Ripper’s MO needs to be given the appropriate resources. 

“Okay,” Will says. “I just need to throw some clothes on and I’ll meet you there.”

Will drags himself out of bed, gets dressed, and starts the slog through morning traffic up to Baltimore, only to be presented with Frederick Chilton’s insane theory that he has the notorious serial killer behind bars already. 

Abel Gideon. _Please._ It’s all Will can do not to scoff in Chilton’s face. 

What a waste of Will’s day.

He doesn’t have plans with Hannibal, but by the time that Will, Jack, and Alana escape from the BSHCI, Will’s stomach is growling and he needs a healthy dose of sanity. 

He calls Hannibal.

"I find myself quite torn,” Hannibal says, leading Will into the sitting room. It’s a little too early for dinner, yet. “On the one hand, I enjoy hearing about your work, and you talking about your cases gives me a unique insight into your brilliant mind. On the other, I know that I perhaps should hope for uneventful days -- for your sake, and the world's."

Hannibal does not, Will notes, actually voice such a preference.

"That being said, how was your day today? Uneventful, or interesting?"

"Stupid."

"In that case..." 

Hannibal walks over to the bar. Will takes Hannibal's move as his cue to sink down into one of the sofas, letting his head fall back, eyes closed. There's an off-and-on headache lingering around Will's temples, and he doesn't want his annoying day to bleed into his night with Hannibal. 

The _clink_ of glass seems loud in the peaceful stillness of Hannibal’s house, but it’s followed by the pour of something undoubtedly expensive, and then footsteps heralding Hannibal's return. Will cracks an eye to see Hannibal standing over him, glass outstretched. 

"Have you ever met Frederick Chilton?" Will asks, accepting the glass gratefully.

"Unfortunately."

Will laughs. "Yeah, that about sums up my feelings too. You can imagine the afternoon I've had."

"Working with Frederick Chilton?" Hannibal asks, to which Will nods in reply. "And what keen insights did Frederick have for you today?"

Will takes a generous sip of his drink. "Well, he thinks that he caught the Chesapeake Ripper."

Hannibal's expression wavers between confusion, amusement, and disdain. Watching the conflicting emotions play out over Hannibal's face is almost entertaining enough to make up for the shitty day Will's had.

Almost. 

It's also a little vindicating. 

"I do not claim to be an expert on the Chesapeake Ripper, and yet I find Frederick's pronouncement difficult to believe."

"Yeah," Will says, "that was my reaction, too."

Will tells Hannibal about his stupid, stupid day -- from finding out in the morning that there was a murder at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to hearing for the first time that Abel Gideon was supposedly the Chesapeake Ripper, to being trapped listening to Frederick Chilton's terrible Chesapeake Ripper theories. He knows that he shouldn't be telling Hannibal any of this, but it's... well, it's nice to have someone to come home to. Someone to whine to, about his terrible day. Someone who will pour him a drink and listen to his woes with a sympathetic expression on his face. 

"...And so we have to at least _pretend_ that we're taking Chilton seriously," Will finishes. His glass, too, is empty.

Hannibal hums consideringly. 

“Jack wants to -” Will cuts himself off. Some things, he really _shouldn’t_ tell Hannibal. It’s hard to remember the sanctity of an ongoing investigation, sitting in Hannibal’s home.

“Jack wants to…?”

“I shouldn’t actually be telling you any of this.”

Hannibal tilts his head a little, grinning conspiratorially. “I promise I won’t tell the Chesapeake Ripper if you won’t.”

Will sets his empty glass down on the table and considers. “It’s not just the Chesapeake Ripper. Jack’s plan… it’s. It’s arguably unethical.”

“Ethics are malleable in given situations. Sometimes ordinary ethics must be cast aside in pursuit of the greater good.”

“You and Jack would get along great.”

“I doubt that very much.” Hannibal looks at Will -- really _looks_ at him. “I’m happy to hear about your work, and I would like to be a sounding board, if something is troubling you. But I do not wish to pry, or for it to appear that I’m trying to gain information.”

“I didn’t think you were.” Will sighs. “Jack wants to publish that Abel Gideon is the Chesapeake Ripper.”

“Even though he knows that to be false?”

“His hope is that professional pride will _inspire_ the Ripper to stake his claim on his legacy. Hence the ethics conundrum.”

“Jack is trying to provoke the Ripper into killing again.”

Will nods. “I don’t want those bodies on my conscience. You can’t take lives to save lives.”

Hannibal nods. “So you believe the Chesapeake Ripper to be retired, then.”

Will blinks. “What? No. His last kill was two years ago, that we know of, but he’s almost certainly just taking a break. Killers like that don’t _retire._ They die, or get arrested. They don’t retire.”

“Then does it truly make a difference, if he kills again in a week, a month, or a year? Jack Crawford doesn’t seem to think so. What he wants is to leverage this opportunity to flush the killer out of rest.”

Will mulls that over, backwards, and forwards. Hannibal provided a different perspective, certainly. Despite his protestations, Will thinks that Hannibal _would_ get along well with Jack, if not for the fact that Will is caught in the middle of them. 

“I think it would make a difference to the victims caught in the crossfire,” he says finally.

“Do you not believe that the Ripper chooses his victims well in advance of his killing?”

That stops Will short. The Chesapeake Ripper’s victims have always seemed so random, patternless -- not that Will ever truly believed that there was no pattern, just that the pattern was too delicate for the BAU to see. Gossamer. Based on criteria no ordinary person would consider a suitable motive for murder. 

“To be honest,” Will says, slow and tentative, “I’ve never actually worked a Chesapeake Ripper case. He hasn’t killed since I started working for the BAU, so the only details I really know are second-hand from case files. I haven’t given a ton of thought to how he chooses his victims, or when.” Will carefully combs through everything that he _does_ know about the Ripper. “But I think you’re right. I mean -- Jack has always thought that each victim had direct contact with the Ripper, it’s just impossible to pin down how, or when. Maybe it’s so difficult because the Ripper marks them, or adds them to his list, and then comes for them much, much later. After any record of their meeting has been lost to time. A phantom, one that even the victim could barely remember. He wouldn’t make an impression on them -- not the way that they make an impression on him -- and so he’s just a ghost. A demon, in the dark.”

Will can see it in his mind’s eye. Some doctor or barista or consultant, driving down a lonely road in the night. Their car breaking down -- chance, or sabotage? And in that darkness, the bright glare of headlights, what should be a rescue, or at least help. The car slows down, coming to a stop. Through the glare of headlights: the silhouette of a man, coming closer, confident and sure. Would their animal brain know? Would they feel fear, when presented with a stranger in the night? The gender of the soon-to-be-victim would certainly make a difference, there, until they could finally see his face. They would almost certainly recognize him. Not like a lightbulb, but a malaise of unease. They would recognize him, but not know quite where _from._ Why. 

There’s nothing more terrifying than meeting someone in the dead of night who is not _quite_ a stranger. 

Hannibal’s home comes back in pieces, like waking from a dream -- the crackle of burning wood in the fireplace, the scent of furniture polish, the glimmer of firelight across Hannibal’s face. 

For a moment Will pictures Hannibal, there, in the dark.

And then reality snaps back into focus.

“Sorry,” Will says, rubbing his eyes. “I got a bit lost, there.”

“Don’t apologize,” Hannibal says. “I’m glad I could inspire some insight, even if it was perhaps unintentional on my part.”

“Have you ever considered consulting with the BAU?” 

Will is mostly joking, but Hannibal _does_ seem to have an uncommonly good grasp of the kind of thinking required to hunt killers, given his line of work.

“In a different life, perhaps. In this one I am quite content with my practice.”

“Yeah, well, if Jack ever comes calling, you’ll see how hard it is to say no to him.” Hannibal gives Will a doubtful look, as though _Hannibal_ ever struggles to tell anyone _no._ Will should try that on for size, one day. “What time is it? I haven’t ruined dinner, have I?”

“Of course not.” As though Hannibal would allow such a thing. “I have everything prepared, but have not yet begun cooking. Would you like to keep me company in the kitchen?”

Of course Will does. There’s no place he would rather be. 

__________

Jack contacts Freddie Lounds on Wednesday, and the article about Abel Gideon is published first thing Thursday morning. 

The Chesapeake Ripper -- the _real_ Chesapeake Ripper, this time -- kills on Sunday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The full French quote from Hannibal's conversation with Alana in this chapter is: "Si on me presse de dire pourquoi je l'aimais, je sens que cela ne se peut exprimer qu'en répondant: parce que c'était lui; parce que c'était moi," which translates to "If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than it was because he was he, and I was I."
> 
> The other French quote is a random grab from Michele Foucault's La Volonté de Savoir, since Foucault seems like a French philosopher that Hannibal would read. 
> 
> This chapter is also super long because there wasn't a good chapter break between 1 & 2, and it seemed better to have a (comparatively) brief first chapter and an excessively long second chapter than vice versa. 
> 
> Huge thanks to everyone who's read, left kudos, and commented! This fic got way more attention than I was ever expecting and I'm super excited to share the rest of it!!


	3. Chapter 3

Working the Chesapeake Ripper case with Jack is stressful, not that Will is surprised. For as much as Jack cares about catching all of the killers they hunt, he has a particular sort of manic energy when it comes to the Ripper. Some of the drive is definitely personal, because of the whole situation with Miriam Lass, but there’s a professional pride, too, that bites through every room that Jack sweeps through, as he barks out questions and demands answers.

The Chesapeake Ripper keeps outsmarting Jack, and Jack _does not_ appreciate that. 

The victim was an insurance salesman. No obvious enemies, no immediate record of who may want to wish him harm, as is usual in Ripper cases. And, to add a cherry on top, the insurance company he worked for didn’t bother keeping track of _which_ agent handled _which_ clients, and so the BAU now has a list of close to four thousand people who the victim _may or may not_ have had contact with via work, aside from all of the people he knew in his personal life. 

Jack went ballistic when he found that out. 

Three days pass with all hands on deck at Quantico, and Will finds himself missing Hannibal something fierce. 

Finds himself thinking about Hannibal when he should be cross-referencing crime scene photos.

Weirdly, Will finds himself keyed up and missing Hannibal’s _mouth,_ Hannibal’s _hands._ Will has gone months or years at a time without sex, but it’s three days into this investigation and Will is antsy. He has plans to see Hannibal tonight, and the pictures spread out on the desk in front of him keep fading in and out of Will’s focused attention, warring with the zing of anticipation, until finally Will gives up. 

Will packs his stuff up and leaves. 

__________

Will has never been gladder to be in Hannibal’s kitchen. 

Will has been thinking about this -- about Hannibal’s hands, Hannibal’s attention -- all goddamn day. There is a sort of formula to these nights at Hannibal’s: cooking, then dinner, then dessert, then retiring to the bedroom. Will leans forward on the island counter, anticipating the end of the evening, as much as he appreciates the beginning and middle. And he _does._ It’s not like he _doesn’t_ appreciate spending quality time with Hannibal -- just that sometimes he wants said quality time to be more… localized. 

Horizontal. 

Naked.

Will wonders if he could get Hannibal to bend him over the dining room table, if he asks him nicely. 

_That_ thought has Will shifting his weight from foot to foot, a hot flush creeping up the back of his neck. _Jesus,_ Will thinks, _get a hold of yourself._

Hannibal, meanwhile, seems to be finishing up whatever he’s doing -- he did tell Will, when Will arrived, because Hannibal likes to explain what he’s cooking and Will likes to listen to Hannibal when he’s passionate about something -- but Will tends to disregard the specifics of the meal for the way Hannibal’s mouth forms around the words. 

The image creeps back into Will’s mind, unbidden: Will, pants around his ankles, ass up and chest bare against the dining room table. Firelight, dancing along his skin. And Hannibal… god, behind him….

Will can’t decide if he would rather have Hannibal’s tongue or his cock. Both, maybe, one after the other. Or maybe, instead: Will, on his back, Hannibal seated at the head of the table, and between Will’s legs, a feast. 

An arm wraps around Will’s waist and pulls him back into a hard chest, yanking Will from his daydream and into the awareness that he clearly lost track of where Hannibal was in the room.

“Did you know,” Hannibal says in a low rumble, running his nose along Will’s neck, “that I can smell your arousal? You’ve been a cloud of pheromones across the kitchen since you arrived.”

That shouldn’t be true -- no one’s sense of smell should be that good -- but nevertheless, Will believes him.

“Sorry,” Will murmurs, not at all sorry. 

One of Hannibal’s hands cups Will through his slacks. Will hadn’t even fully realized that he was already hard, but he groans at the pressure of Hannibal’s hand, firm and familiar. Hannibal’s teeth trail a stinging line of bites from the base of Will’s trapezius up to his ear. 

“Do you have any idea how much of a distraction you are?” Hannibal asks, hands undoing Will’s belt, button, zipper. “Standing here like an innocent observer, all the while your thoughts are down some carnal path?” Hannibal’s hand pulls Will’s cock out of his pants, his underwear. “Have you been thinking of me?”

“Yes,” Will gasps, as Hannibal’s hand begins to move. A few dry strokes, and then Hannibal’s hand is in front of Will’s mouth, waiting. Will licks his palm once, twice, again and again, getting it _wet._ Will can’t really believe they’re doing this _here, now._ With meat sizzling on cast iron a few feet in front of where Will stands. 

“Good,” Hannibal rumbles, returning his now-slick hand to Will’s dick. 

And Will -- Will doesn’t know what to do with his _hands,_ or really any of him. They’re standing in the middle of the kitchen, both still fully dressed, with only Will’s dick out. Will steadies himself with one hand, and reaches back to grab Hannibal’s thigh with the other, wanting to have some sort of grasp -- 

“Hands on the countertop,” Hannibal orders, and Will’s cock jerks at the authority in Hannibal’s tone. 

Will shivers as he places his hands on the marble, obedient. He shuffles his feet a bit, too, giving himself a steadier stance and giving Hannibal a little more room to work with.

“Good boy,” Hannibal says, rubbing his thumb over the head of Will’s cock. 

Will gasps, shivers. He’s never going to be able to stand here, watching Hannibal cook, without thinking about this -- about Hannibal’s hand on his cock, voice in his ear. Hannibal’s other hand teases over his balls, then slides back to rub over his perineum, while his other grasps _just_ shy of tight enough to get Will off. He’s completely at Hannibal’s mercy -- he’ll come when Hannibal wants him to, and not a moment sooner. 

“Is this what you were thinking about?” Hannibal punctuates the question with a few quick, _perfect,_ strokes. 

The question takes a few seconds to penetrate Will’s mind and coalesce into something _meaningful,_ instead of just the rich sound of Hannibal’s voice. 

Will shakes his head, honest.

“What, then?”

Will shakes his head again, words seeming very far away from his grasp. The hand on his cock slows in response, gentles.

“Tell me, Will, what do I do in your fantasies?”

Hannibal is barely stroking, now, just the pads of his fingertips teasing over Will’s cock.

“Over,” Will gasps, “over the dining room table.”

The kitchen is Hannibal’s heart, but the dining room is Hannibal’s id. Hot with crackling fire, creeping plants, mildly disturbing centerpieces and fucking _Leda_ on the wall -- that seems like the perfect room for indulgence, for excess. 

Hannibal rewards Will by resuming a more normal pace and with a bite to his ear lobe. 

“I could make a meal of you,” Hannibal murmurs. 

Will is _so close._ He’s panting and moaning and the back of his neck prickles with sweat, but he knows better than to _ask_ Hannibal for what he wants -- he’ll get what Hannibal gives to him, when Hannibal wants it, and not a moment sooner. 

_That_ thought has Will dribbling precome and gasping, whimpering. 

_How did Will not know this about himself?_

“Would you prefer to come now, or later?”

Will whines at the question. He hadn’t -- he hadn’t thought about that, hadn’t considered that maybe he wouldn’t get what he wants, that he would have to _choose._ Will wants to say _both,_ but Hannibal didn’t give him that option. Will wants to come -- wants, desperately, to give in to the spiraling sensation that’s ratcheting ever-higher with each pass of Hannibal’s hand. But he _also_ wants to come on Hannibal’s cock, hunger sated and whisky-warm. 

“Or,” Hannibal says, pulling Will back more firmly into his chest, “would you like me to choose?”

“Yes, _god,_ yes, please,” Will gasps, toes curling. 

The hand on his cock picks up speed, switching gears from lazy indulgence to purposeful. Hannibal’s other hand cups Will’s balls -- massaging, sending jolts of pleasure through him. Will moans and pants, unable to stop himself from gasping and whimpering as Hannibal tugs him relentlessly to the brink. 

Will leans back into Hannibal’s body. He keeps his hands where Hannibal ordered them on the counter, but allows the rest of him -- his back to Hannibal’s chest, his ass to Hannibal’s hard cock -- to fall fully into Hannibal’s weight. Will’s head tips backwards onto Hannibal’s shoulder. 

“Fuck,” Will moans. “ _Fuck.”_

And then -- nothing. Hannibal’s hands come to an abrupt stop, one curled tightly around the base of Will’s cock, the other coming to rest on Will’s tense thigh. 

Will takes a gasping breath. Then another, and another, and another, trying to get himself under control. His cock throbs, arousal turned near-painful in its intensity. The hand around his shaft loosens, and then Hannibal neatly tucks Will back into his underwear, his slacks, and then re-does his belt. 

Will just tips forward and rests his burning forehead against the cold marble countertop. 

And Hannibal -- Hannibal steps back, releasing Will, and then walks over to the stove, cool-as-you-please, as though the last ten minutes never even happened. He starts talking about the meal, or the process of cooking it, Will doesn’t even know -- but what he _does_ know is that Hannibal knows he’s not actually listening. Hannibal’s voice is pitched to that soothing tone, the register that he settles into when he knows that Will isn’t listening to the words that he’s saying. 

Will’s cock dribbles. Being left should be -- annoying. Rude. It shouldn’t be _hotter_ than if Hannibal had allowed him to come, but apparently Will’s cock has a different opinion. Will takes a few more deep breaths to get a hold of himself, and then stands upright. 

(Hannibal puts up a great front of being disaffected -- if it weren’t for the tent in his pants, or his blown-out pupils, Will would think him unruffled. He’s not, though. Hannibal just has iron self control.)

Will follows along when Hannibal leads him to the dining room table. Sits, docile, and eats his meal, wondering all the while if dessert tonight will be _him._ While Will normally enjoys being prepared -- Hannibal is usually very generous and very thorough -- he wishes that Hannibal could just shove him down and push _in_ without hurting him. 

Will could -- Will could get himself a plug. Could work himself open, and then sit at Hannibal’s table like everything is normal. And then, at the end of his meal, he could take off his clothes, piece by piece, and present himself to Hannibal. Bend over and let Hannibal _see_ what Will’s done for him, what Will _wants._

“Will,” Hannibal says, eyes dark and glowing in the firelight. “Tell me.”

Will shivers, and tells him. 

__________

"Can I talk to you about my sex life?"

Bedelia smiles, actually _smiles,_ like she's trying not to laugh at Will -- like he has said something truly funny. 

"You may speak about any subject that is on your mind."

"I know but..." Will makes a vague hand gesture, counting on her to understand the odd situation they have found themselves in, not only as doctor and patient, but matchmaker and matchmakee.

"If it's on your mind, and something you feel like you need to talk about, then yes," she says. “Provided you do not ask me for information I cannot give."

"No," Will says, but finds himself without the words to continue. The subject seemed reasonable a moment ago, but now that he's confronted with actually _saying_ something to her...

"Are you having trouble," she says, "in the... change of circumstances you have found yourself in?"

"No. Kind of the opposite, actually. It's good. It's... really great, actually."

"So the problem is that you're enjoying yourself more than you expected to."

"Yes?" Nervous energy has Will shifting in his chair, trying to pull together the words that seemed so easy this morning, in the shower. Basically _everything_ sounds smarter when you're washing your hair. "I’m not, generally, a very sex driven person. Not that I'm dysfunctional or asexual or anything, but it's never been the thing that drives me. And I'm dating a man, now, but I don't..." Will pauses. "I don't consider myself gay. I'm definitely more attracted to women than I am to men."

"And yet you find your sex life with a man more satisfying, and that is making you question your sexuality in a way that dating a man did not."

"Yeah."

Will can generally count on Bedelia to catch the meaning between his inarticulate words.

"Do you currently find yourself partnered with a mirror," she asks, "or with a frozen lake?"

Will blinks. He hasn't thought about his relationship in those terms. Hasn't even really considered them since his original conversation with Bedelia, all those months ago.

"A frozen lake, I suppose."

"One that you can jump on, without fear of breaking it?" she echos.

Will finds himself nodding. "It's more clear than with you, though." He considers. "Less clear? More reflective? I think this metaphor is getting away from me."

"You know very little about my private life, but you should know a great deal about the private life of someone you're dating,” she reminds him. 

"Right." 

Will isn't entirely sure where she's going with this.

"With past partners, did you find yourself anticipating their needs and desires? Focusing on actions that you could anticipate them wanting, rather than, perhaps, following after your own wants?"

"Yeah, but that's what sex is supposed to be, right? It's a partnership. Two people, coming together, with different wants and needs. You have to compromise."

“Yes and no. A normal, healthy sex life has you fulfilling your needs, and your partner also fulfilling theirs. When you focus your actions in response to your partner’s needs exclusively you may find the encounter lacking.”

“I guess.”

"Do you find yourself doing this in your current relationship?"

Will blinks. "No," he says, surprised. "I don't."

"So with your previous partners, you were distracted by your mirroring. You could easily grasp their desires, and perhaps didn't even realize that you were acting out a part, instead of pursuing your own satisfaction. Yet currently you find yourself in a relationship in which your mirroring is hindered by a more inscrutable partner, leaving you mentally and emotionally available to fully participate in sexual acts. A partner, instead of an actor.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“While you are very skilled at understanding others, you are less adept at understanding yourself.”

“Oh,” Will says with a laugh, “that I know.”

“Do try to resist the temptation for simple classification. If you look at your sex life and say ‘I am having better sex with a man than I had, in the past, with women; therefore, gender must be the answer,’ you miss out on the more important details. Resist that temptation.”

“Well if I could do that all on my own, you would be out of a job.”

“No,” Bedelia says, “I would not.”

__________

Will stands in front of the second victim of the Chesapeake Ripper’s current sounder. The body hangs from the doors of an abandoned church; nude, like so many of the Ripper’s victims are. The body’s hands have been removed at the wrists, arm stumps instead blossoming into clusters of small red, white, and pink flowers. Its jaw hangs useless, broken, mouth open and empty. 

The man’s eyes have been pinned open. To keep him from rest, or to force him to see?

"There's a message here,” Will says, staring up at the body. All around them crime techs are clearing the scene, bagging evidence, shielding against potential onlookers. Not that there should be many onlookers _here_ \-- not in this neighborhood, amongst these derelict buildings. The bustle keeps Will from being able to focus, but he doesn’t need focus to see what’s right before his eyes.

This is no ordinary Ripper murder. 

"Isn't there always?"

Will shakes his head. "No. The Chesapeake Ripper always has meaning to what he does, but this... this is a _message._ It's targeted, it...." he trails off, unsure how to articulate what he means. This crime scene feels gift wrapped. It's meaningful, more so than the Chesapeake Ripper's usual fare. Personal, somehow, though Will can't quite see how. "It's a Titus Andronicus reference," Will says finally, for lack of anything more useful.

"Yeah, I got that,” Jack says. “But he doesn't exactly look like the daughter of the Ripper's enemy." 

Will looks over the crime scene again, grasping. There’s something there, he knows. The devil is in the details -- and the Chesapeake Ripper never skimps on details. 

"What do we know about the victim?"

"He's a freelance true crime writer, based out of Kentucky," Jack says. "Reported missing by his wife in the early hours of the morning."

“Was he traveling in Baltimore?”

“No. He went missing from home.”

Will turns back to the figure. This killing wasn’t opportunistic -- the Ripper had to travel all the way to Kentucky and back for this murder. This is purposeful. Pointed. Dramatic. There's something that the Ripper is trying to tell him, if only Will could _see_ it. 

Something, something, something.

"Hey guys?" Beverly says, looking at her phone. "You probably want to see this." She holds up the device, and even though Will is too far away to read whatever is on the screen, all of a sudden, he _knows._ "The vic's most recent article was about Will," Beverly says, "published two days ago."

"What does it say?" Jack asks.

"The usual. Looks like the guy is a Freddie Lounds wannabe... Will's a psychopath, blah blah blah, not fit to be in the BAU.” She makes a face. “It's not exactly flattering."

Jack glances at Will out of the corner of his eye, then looks back at the corpse.

"We think this is related?"

The crime scene is a gift, the most flattering kind the Chesapeake Ripper knows how to give. Will allows his eyes to fall shut, and -- 

The pendulum swings, and Will _sees._

Will opens his eyes. "This is an acknowledgement. It's a gift, and it's also a warning."

"To who? To you?"

"The flowers are Sweet Williams,” Will says, though Jack’s unchanging expressions says that he already knew that, “and at its heart, Titus Andronicus is a revenge story.”

“So is this supposed to be revenge against you? Or revenge _for_ you?”

Will looks again at the body. At the shell of what was once a presumptuous and unctuous man. 

“He wants me to know that he knows who I am."

That explanation is far, far too simple for what the Ripper intended in this display, but Will can’t tell Jack the full meaning. Not without Jack putting Will under 24-hour surveillance. 

Beside him, Beverly makes a doubtful noise. "By killing someone who wrote about you?"

"It was rude. The vic doesn't know me, has never met me, but he decided to slander me regardless."

"If that's the case, then why not go after Freddie Lounds?" Jack asks. "She's been writing about you for months. Why target some nobody?"

The Ripper’s thought process spins out before Will, tangible and transparent for the first time. Will _understands._ He may not understand everything that the killer does, but this, he knows for certain. This has given him one small piece of the thousand-piece puzzle he needs to assemble a picture of the man behind the monster. 

"Freddie is useful,” is what Will settles on for an explanation. “The Chesapeake Ripper is almost certainly a Tattlecrime reader -- it's how he keeps up with us, with his case, with everything else going on in the area. Killing her would disrupt his flow of information. But this guy?" Will shakes his head. "Presumptuous. Rude. He thinks that he can sit down in front of a computer and write -- about a city he's never even been to -- and start making claims about the people here? The crime?” All of a sudden, Will is seething with borrowed anger. “Who does he think he _is?_ He's a pathetic bottom feeder, who's grasping desperately at the bottom rungs of the ladder, trying to pull himself up by the coattails of greater men. Take his tongue, take his hands -- that'll shut him up, once and for all."

Jack ignores Will's acid, well-used to his antics by now, and mulls over what he knows, what Will knows, what the crime scene is telling them.

"I've been hunting the Chesapeake Ripper for almost five years, and _I've_ never gotten a personal acknowledgement."

Will could say, _I'm special._

Will could say, _maybe he finds me more interesting._

Will could say, _you’ve hunted the Ripper like an animal; I look at the man, and he's just returning the favor._

Instead, Will casts Jack a side-long look and says nothing. Jack's raised eyebrow is saying more than enough for the both of them, anyway. 

"I'm not going to lose you to this case, am I?" 

Jack doesn't look worried -- Jack doesn't really _do_ worried, although he fakes it decently well -- but there's a hum of honesty beneath his words. Jack has already lost one agent to the hunt, and he definitely isn't keen on losing another. 

Will shakes his head, a delayed response.

"If this is a message," Jack starts, and stops. He looks around the crime scene, unseeing, before settling back on Will. "I don't want this to continue." He points to the body. "I don't want the Ripper to be sending you personal messages. I don't want him contacting you at all. That? Makes me nervous. And I don't like to be nervous, Will."

"Not much I can do to stop him, Jack."

Jack sighs. 

"If this is personal? Then look for clues. He's doing something that he's never done before -- let's use that to catch the son of a bitch."

__________

"Are you afraid?" Hannibal asks later, over dinner, after Will has told him all about the odd scene from the morning.

"I don't see any reason to be."

It's true -- the Chesapeake Ripper has no reason to be angry with Will, and so Will has no reason to fear the man. 

"It sounds as though Jack Crawford is afraid for you."

"I think Jack is more afraid of me being seduced by the Ripper than being killed by him."

Will isn't sure why he just said that. Jack hadn't said or done anything in particular to indicate that he felt that way, and yet...

And yet Will knows it to be true. Jack's concern lurked in the downward curl of his lip, in the shadowed way he looked at the body. He's long been afraid of Will's moral compass, his impressionability, his ability to connect to monsters. The murder was personal, so Will -- and by-extension, Jack -- have reason to take it personally.

"And you?" Hannibal asks with a relaxed grin, inviting Will in on the joke. "Are you feeling seduced?"

"I don't want anyone to kill for me."

"That is an answer, and yet not the answer to the question that I asked."

Will is unspeakably relieved that Hannibal doesn't appear to be jealous. Light, animated, engaged, and _not_ jealous. It's nice to know that at least one person in his life doesn't think he'll run off with a serial killer at the first opportunity.

"I won't be seduced through dead bodies."

"Good. I was rather hoping that the way to your heart is through your stomach."

__________

"The Chesapeake Ripper killed someone for me yesterday."

"And how does that make you feel?"

Will makes a show of mulling over the question for a few seconds. He knows the answer he'll give, just as he knows that it's objectively the _wrong_ answer to give. 

"Powerful."

The flower arrangement is orange, today, jubilant and whimsical -- creamsicle roses, flanked by pumpkin-colored daylilies and some tall and spindly tropical flower that Will can't identify. And, tucked between the more dramatic blooms, arcs of small, white, bell-shaped flowers -- lily of the valley. 

"You're not frightened?"

"No," Will says, turning to look in Bedelia's direction. "Why would I be?"

"Most people would be frightened," she says, "if a notoriously sadistic serial killer started paying them special attention."

"I'm not most people."

"No," she concedes, "you are not."

"He was just... introducing himself. He wants me to know that he sees me. That he finds me interesting."

"And you did not take this as a threat?"

Will shakes his head. "I would know if it was intended to be a threat. The Chesapeake Ripper isn't subtle."

Bedelia says nothing, though her silence is weighty. Pointed. Not judgmental, because Bedelia doesn't usually _do_ judgmental, but it is doubtful, maybe. Attentive. 

"Have you ever met a serial killer?" he asks.

For a long moment Bedelia doesn't respond. Long enough that Will begins to wonder if she won't answer because she believes Will is deflecting, or because she doesn't ever divulge details of her life when he asks for them. 

Maybe it's both.

"I have."

"Were they in prison at the time?"

Another pause. 

"No."

"Were you frightened?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because they had no reason to harm me."

Will wants to ask her how she knows she was talking to a serial killer, if the person wasn't in prison, but he knows she won't answer him. One of her former patients, maybe. Instead, Will spreads his hands out in a _you see?_ gesture. 

"I see your point," she says. "Though, as the profiler working his case, the Chesapeake Ripper has plenty of reason to harm you."

Will frowns. "You've never argued with me about one of my cases before."

"And I am not arguing with you now." Bedelia cocks her head. "Part of my job is to ensure that you are stable, and not being unduly influenced by the work that you do. That is, specifically, what you asked of me in our early sessions. You are behaving," she says, "somewhat unlike yourself. The questions I ask are to ensure that your beliefs are rational, and that you are not slipping into a state where you may not notice the loss of your own perception. It has happened before." She puts a slight emphasis on the word _has,_ as though she needs to remind him of the dark time at the beginning of his employment at the BAU. 

Will nods, chastised.

"You said that this made you feel powerful. Is that because he made happen something that you wanted to happen?"

"No." Will looks out the window. "The victim wasn't someone I knew, or knew of. But he was chosen to get my attention."

"And you get some kind of satisfaction, out of him wanting your attention."

"It's not a good feeling," Will says. "Not a _rational_ feeling. It's hard for me to describe to someone who doesn't do what I do."

"Try."

Will takes a deep breath and slouches down in his seat. 

"It's... taking a class that's damn-near impossible to get into, and having the professor choose your first paper as the sample that all the other students should model around. It's going to a bar and the bartender sets a drink in front of you before you've even ordered, and it turns out to be from the most attractive person in the room.” Will drums his fingers against his knee, trying to come up with another analogy. A smile cuts across his face, acerbic. "It's winning the elementary school talent show."

"The Chesapeake Ripper is someone you admire, and he has chosen you as his equal. Only you."

"I don't admire the Ripper."

Bedelia arches an eyebrow at him.

"I don't. I -" The words don't come. Will probably doesn't need to get defensive -- it's not like Bedelia is attacking him, not precisely -- but there's an implicit positive implication to the word _admire,_ one that Will chafes at. "Admiring a serial killer is like admiring a tiger, or a shark. I have, _at most_ , an appreciation for the elaborateness of his craft, and the, the difficulty of doing what he does without leaving _any_ evidence, without ever being seen, or getting caught."

"I am not Jack," Bedelia reminds him.

"You know what? Fine. Maybe I do admire him, a little bit.” If there’s any one thing that Will knows for sure about the Ripper, it’s that the man knows himself. Will can’t think of a personality trait that he envies more. “And yeah, maybe it _is_ exciting for him to choose me as an equal. Is that what you want to hear?"

"You're getting very worked up about what you perceive is my opinion of your opinion of the Chesapeake Ripper."

Will lets out a breath he didn't even realize he was holding, a deflating balloon. He laughs, rubs his eyes. "The lady doth protest too much, huh."

"Have you considered that perhaps the Chesapeake Ripper likes winding you up?"

This time Will shakes his head with purpose, sure. "No. He likes winding _Jack_ up. This is not that. This is him establishing contact."

"And do you want to be contacted?"

In the periphery, Will can see a dark shape coalescing into a shadowed figure crowned with antlers. Standing. Watching. 

"I don't know."

"That," she says, "is a decision you likely will need to make, sooner rather than later. Or else the Ripper may make it for you."

__________

Contrary to Bedelia's warning, the Chesapeake Ripper doesn't contact Will immediately. First a day passes, then a week, and Will is left grappling at loose ends.

Maybe Will was wrong about his intentions. Maybe the killer wasn't attempting to contact, so much as testing Will's resolve -- pressing Will's soft, fleshy underbelly, to see how best to make him bleed. Maybe the Chesapeake Ripper is waiting to unveil the third of his sounder. Waiting for something that will be meaningful to Will, something _interesting._

Maybe, maybe, maybe. 

When the call comes in for a potential serial killer in Wichita, Will is almost relieved for the distraction, for a break in this ratcheting tension.

Almost. 

Until, that is, Jack refuses to take the case. 

"What do you mean, we're not taking it?"

Beverly had told Will about the call, and when Will never heard from Jack, he had dragged himself down to Jack's office for the details. Instead of jumping at the chance to actually _solve_ a case instead of spinning their wheels, Jack just shrugs. 

"The local PD seems to have it handled."

Will frowns. "They obviously don't, or they wouldn't have called us."

"Since when are you eager to go chasing killers?"

"Since when are you _not?"_

"Sit down," Jack says, nodding at the chair across from his desk. He waits until Will is settled before continuing. "You know why I rejected this case."

"You're really canceling all cases that aren't the Chesapeake Ripper?"

"We are in the middle of a sounder," Jack says, "and I will not waste you on some strangler in Kansas while the Ripper is _here,_ now. What I need is for you to be ready and waiting for my call. I don't care what you're doing in your personal life -- the only thing that matters to me is that your phone is on ringer, on your person or on your bedside table, at all times. When I say jump, you jump. When I say run, you don't walk, you _run_ to that crime scene. Clear?"

Will nods, absently, and rubs his fingertips over his knee. "It's been a while now, Jack."

"Eleven days. The longest he's ever waited between kills."

Will nods again. "I think he's waiting for something."

"And what might that be?"

"I don't know. What I _do_ know is that he won't finish his sounder while I'm out of town."

Jack levels him with a _look._ "You really think the Chesapeake Ripper is going to kill according to your schedule?"

"I think that he wanted my attention. And, now that he has it, he's waiting to see what I'll do. It's a power play." Will realizes the truth of his words as he says them. "He has the attention of the entire BAU focused on him, and now he's just a cat batting around a mouse. How long can he keep us waiting? Weeks? Months?"

"He's never done anything like that before." At Will's look, Jack sighs. "You think he's fucking with us."

"I think that, in the past, the BAU was an audience, at most. Now, I think that we're... something else. Participants, of some kind. He's playing a game with us."

Jack interlaces his fingers and taps his thumbs together. 

"And you think we should play ball."

Will scoffs. "We're already playing. We have been, ever since we sold out to Freddie Lounds."

"You think he knew we were goading him?"

"No clue," Will says with a shrug, "but if I had to take a stab in the dark, I would say yes. If the Chesapeake Ripper felt like his legacy was being threatened, he would be angry, not... playful. We pulled his strings to make him dance -- now, he's pulling ours."

Jack leans back in his chair, thinking. The wall clock ticks, ticks, ticks, while Jack considers Will's hypothesis. While Jack considers the different ways to move his chess pieces around the board.

"You think that if we go to Wichita," Jack says slowly, "the Ripper won't kill without our audience, _and_ that he will most likely kill again upon our return?"

_My return,_ Will thinks. It's Will's attention that the Ripper wants, and Will's absence that may even goad him into acting, but Will isn't about to say that to Jack.

"Yes."

Jack nods. "All right. Let's give your little theory a shot."

__________

Traveling is Will's least favorite part of the job. The trip is always a last minute rush -- grab a bag, get in the car, speed to the airport -- and then comes the hassle of picking up boarding passes, checking bags, boarding, crying babies, seat neighbors who _refuse_ to share the armrest, baggage claim, car rentals. All of it. When traveling with Jack, sometimes Will checks out. Turns his mind off and follows behind like a duckling, boarding pass in one hand, coffee in the other. He goes where Jack goes; he stops when Jack stops. Jack has a presence, the kind where crowds part around him and people duck out of his way. Will, on the other hand, seems to have an invisible sign on him that says _shoulder-check me and run over my foot with your roll-aboard, it's fine, I won't complain._ He's not quite sure why. In most other scenarios, strangers seem to view Will as a threat; in an airport, tired mothers hand Will their babies. 

(It doesn't help, either, that the flights booked by the FBI seem to _always_ put them in Terminal D, otherwise known as the absolute crappiest terminal in Dulles airport, and the only one without a stop on the _AeroTrain_ \-- necessitating, of course, that Will has to pile onto the crowded, nausea-inducing shuttle buses that should have been retired in the eighties.)

Will hates traveling. 

On the flight out to Kansas, Will had Jack to follow behind. The trip home, Will traverses his connection in O'Hare alone. Jack needed to stay a few hours later to handle some of the paperwork between the FBI and the local police, something that Will has no responsibility for as a consultant instead of an FBI agent. Jack had waved him off with a gruff _go home,_ and so Will had gone. 

(Will could have stayed with Jack, sure, but Jack’s flight doesn’t land until almost midnight, and Will would rather claw out his own eyes than stare at the walls of the police station for hours.)

Will hates Chicago O'Hare. The halls are cavernous and loud, the people are grouchy, and the signs are confusing enough that Will spends ten minutes circling for the right direction to his terminal. By the time he makes it to his gate, he has a pounding headache and a little bit more empathy for all the people who go on killing sprees. And _then_ he sees that his 1:00 flight has been delayed until 3:00. 

Will wants to go home. Wants to see his dogs, wants to see _Hannibal._ Dropping into an uncomfortable airport seat, Will takes a long, deep breath, and lets it out equally slowly. He closes his eyes and counts backwards from fifty, then forwards again. 

"Mommy mommy mommy MOMMY! MOMMY! _MOMMY! MOMMY!_ "

Will opens his eyes and glances over at the source of the noise -- a young child and his mother, over at the desk. The boy dangles ineffectively from his mother's wrist, all ten of his chubby fingers digging claws into her soft flesh. He pulls, shouts, pulls, shouts, while his mother talks progressively louder to the gate agent, trying to be heard over her child's screeching. The child's discarded toys lay strewn across the floor, some directly in the path of quick-moving travelers. One woman dodges expertly around a blue blocky thing, while the man walking behind her stumbles directly over it and nearly falls. He shoots a glare at the mother but keeps moving. 

"MOMMY!" Tug. "MOMMY!" Tug. "MOMMY!"

Will closes his eyes again. 

After a few excruciating minutes, the woman finishes her business at the desk and plops her kid down in the row behind Will, wearily telling the kid to be quiet and behave himself. 

Across the aisle, a baby starts crying. 

_"We will now begin boarding for United flight 5871 to Denver. Passengers in boarding group one are now welcome to board."_

Will wants to be home. He wants a glass of whisky, and he wants a quiet evening alone with Hannibal. 

If Will is honest with himself, he wants to _call_ Hannibal, but that seems -- needy, maybe. Pathological. Does he want to talk to Hannibal because he misses his romantic partner, or does he want to call Hannibal because he's comforting like a psychiatrist? Is it even _healthy_ for him to lean on Hannibal that way? On the other hand, Will would never call Bedelia in a time like this. He's not panicking, he's not disassociating, he's not losing his mind. He's just tired. Cranky. 

_"We are now boarding United flight 5871 to Denver. Passengers in boarding group two are now welcome to board."_

Maybe Will is overthinking this. 

A shrill shriek pierces through the tentative calm Will has surrounded himself with, and before he even realizes what he's doing, Will finds himself opening his eyes and glaring at the mother/son duo behind him. The mother mouths _sorry_ at him and strokes a hand over the child's sandy-blond hair, saying _"we need to use our inside voices."_

The boy shrieks again, this time less distressed and clearly more in defiance of his mother. 

_"Shhhhh."_

A third shriek follows, then a fourth, each growing more jubilant than the last. 

Will's cell phone starts ringing, and for a moment, Will considers boarding a plane to Alaska and never coming back. If this is Jack calling to say that he's changed his mind, and Will really _is_ needed back at the scene, then Will might actually move to Alaska. But when he successfully digs his phone out of his pocket, the caller ID reads _Hannibal._ Will knows that there's a goofy smile on his face -- he can feel it. 

"Hi," Will answers. 

"Hello Will."

_"We are now boarding United flight 5871 to Denver. Passengers in boarding group three are now welcome to board."_

"I take it you are still at the airport?"

Before flying to Chicago, Will had called Hannibal to let him know that he was on his way back to the east coast.

"Yeah. My flight's been delayed two hours." Will closes his eyes, slouches down, and lets his head tip back onto the hard plastic edge of the seat. 

"You sound exhausted."

"I am exhausted."

"Would you like me to pick you up from the airport? What time does your flight get in?"

"My flight should get in at five, assuming they don't delay it again, but don't worry about picking me up. My car is parked at Dulles." 

If Will is honest, he would love for Hannibal to pick him up. The thought of being able to collapse into Hannibal's decadently comfortable car and nap on the drive home -- instead of taking a bus to his parking lot and getting in his car and driving home through what will still be rush hour traffic -- sounds _divine._ But his car _is_ parked at the airport, and it would be childish to leave it there and incur another day's parking expenses just because he has a headache. 

"If you change your mind," Hannibal says, "the offer stands."

The drive from Baltimore to Dulles isn't exactly trivial, but Hannibal wouldn't have offered if he didn't intend to follow through. 

"Thanks." Will shifts a bit, trying to get comfortable -- a laughable goal in an airport waiting chair. "Did you just call to find out what time I'm landing?"

"Partly."

Will grins. "And the other part?"

"I had hoped to spend a bit more time with you before losing you to work once again, and so I found myself idling at home, somewhat at loose ends."

Hannibal would never say anything so pedestrian as _I missed you,_ but Will hears it all the same. 

_"We are now boarding United flight 5871 to Denver. Passengers in boarding group four are now welcome to board."_

"Are you free now?" Will asks, "or is there anything you need to be doing?"

"I can stay on the line, if you would like the company."

"Talk to me? Just give me something to focus on other than -” behind Will, the little boy screeches again. Will winces. “- other than that.”

Hannibal hums in understanding. "Have you ever been to Italy?" he asks, voice dropping into the same even-toned, soothing register he uses when reading to Will. 

"Nope."

"I would love to take you there sometime. I could spend a month showing you around Florence alone, if we had the time. We could rent a car, perhaps. Start in Palermo and drive through Sicily, take a ferry to the mainland and then drive up along the coast...."

Will listens to the cadence of Hannibal's voice and lets the noisy chaos of the airport fall away. Hannibal shares interesting, colorful details of what seems like every city in Italy, along with commentary on the food and its variances from city to city, fantastic churches, overcrowded tourism, and whatever else he deems worth mentioning. Will doesn't say much in response -- just the occasional noise of encouragement. 

"Will?" Hannibal says finally, after an indeterminate amount of time has passed.

"Hmm?"

"Which boarding group are you in?"

Will fishes around in his pocket for his crumpled boarding pass, then opens his eyes and squints to read the number. "Two?"

"I believe you will be boarding soon."

Sure enough, there's a line of passengers lined up at Will's gate. He must have missed the call for boarding group one. 

"Yeah," Will says with a yawn. "Thanks for noticing that."

"It seems this is where I leave you."

"Thanks for keeping me company."

"I can think of little else I would rather be doing."

_"We are now boarding United flight 5649 to Washington. Passengers in boarding group two are now welcome to board."_

"That's me," Will says, standing up and stretching. "I'll, uh -- I'll see you when I get home?"

"Of course. Safe travels."

"Bye."

"Goodbye, Will."

Will joins the line for the airplane. Shuffling forward, he tries to hold onto the calm of his last hour or so on the phone, while a woman a few people ahead of him argues with the gate agent about whether or not her bag is small enough to be carried on, or will need to be gate-checked. The bag doesn't fit in the bag sizer, the bag is taken, the line moves up, and up, and up, until Will is finally walking down the jetway and onto the plane. 

  
  


When Will emerges into the crowded pick-up area at the airport, he is _not_ disappointed by Hannibal's absence. That would be, quite frankly, ridiculous, since Hannibal _asked_ Will if he wanted to be picked up, and _offered_ to come, and Will said no. This isn't a Jane Austin novel or a Hugh Grant movie, and Will isn't some perpetually fainting damsel with the vapors or some plucky blonde protagonist. He can drive himself home. 

Will counts his silver linings -- at least he gets to drive back to Wolf Trap in the dedicated airport lanes on the Dulles Toll Road, rather than being at the mercy of the whims of rush hour traffic. The sun's last gasping breath stutters out behind him as he cruises along the highway, running parallel to the nearly-empty metro car trundling back to the city center to pick up more commuters. 

There's a man on the train. Just one, sitting alone, hunched over his phone, with only his reflection in the dark windows for company. They ride alone together -- him and Will, Will and him -- until Will can't quite justify driving slow enough to stay in pace with the metro car, and he speeds off into the awaiting dark. 

  
  


Will continues to be _not disappointed_ in Hannibal's absence all the way until he pulls into his driveway in Wolf Trap and finds Hannibal's Bentley parked out front, his little house all lit up and welcoming. Winston is already waiting at the front window, tail wagging. Entering the house is, as always, a mad rush -- the dogs are generally well-behaved, but Will returning from trips always gets them riled up, and so Will spends a minute greeting them, petting and roughhousing in equal measure.

Hannibal, predictably, is in the kitchen. The scent of whatever he's cooking has suffused through the whole house, and the fact that Will hasn't eaten anything since the hotel's continental breakfast that morning makes itself known. Loudly. With Hannibal here, Will half-expects to turn and see a fire in the fireplace, even though he's had the chimney closed up for years. There probably _would_ be a fire, if not for that fact. 

(For as open as Hannibal appears to be, about his life and about his past, there are subjects that he never broaches. He'll talk about the beauty of Florence, or the years he spent in Paris, or how much he loved traveling through Japan -- but Will still doesn't know his country of origin, the source of his uncommon accent. 

Hannibal has never spoken of his family -- not even once, not even in passing. Hannibal tends fires in nearly every room of his home, wears suits buttoned down to his wrists, and keeps piles of warm blankets on his bed. Will doesn't need to be a profiler to see the cold that seeped into Hannibal's bones in his formative years. Cold like that can be metaphorical, but Will is almost certain it's literal. 

In his mind's eye he sees a young, defenseless version of Hannibal, sitting alone in the snow. 

Will's house isn't _cold,_ but he wants Hannibal to be warm here. Welcome here.

He should really open up the chimney.)

"Hi," Will says, extricating himself from his dogs and stepping into the kitchen. "What are you making? Smells familiar."

"A New Orleans style gumbo with chicken and homemade andouille sausage." Hannibal sets aside his spoon for a moment to greet Will with a kiss. "Dinner should be ready in a few minutes, if you would like to freshen up."

Will _would_ like to freshen up, but he still hasn't fully processed the fact that Hannibal is _here_ in his _home_ cooking him _dinner._ Will has never not come home to an empty house, before. Will has never had... this. This fantasy turned reality. 

Will should go change into fresh clothes, and probably brush his teeth, but instead he steps up behind Hannibal, loops his arms around Hannibal's waist, and tucks his chin over Hannibal's shoulder. Will clings; Hannibal lets him. One breath becomes two, becomes three, becomes four, as Hannibal diligently stirs and pokes and prods at the gumbo. Or whatever it is he's doing -- Will's barely paying attention, his focus instead on not dissolving into a messy, over-emotional mess. 

This is fine. This is _good,_ that Hannibal is here. 

"...You make your own sausage?" Will says, instead of letting the conversation stray to more serious territory.

"I do when I have the time. This is actually the last of my stock, I will have to make more soon."

Will smiles against Hannibal's throat, helplessly fond. 

"Because you couldn't possibly buy sausage from the fancy organic butcher you go to."

"Couldn't possibly," Hannibal agrees easily. 

There's a name for the feeling bubbling in Will's chest. A four letter word that's far premature, far too serious for the paltry few months they've been seeing each other. Will swallows the word, locks it away. 

_Too soon._

Will has dined at Hannibal's table enough times to know that this dish is far, far more simple than what Hannibal normally prepares, even accounting for the homemade sausage. Will can't help but draw the obvious connections between his own childhood in New Orleans and Hannibal's choice of food. Can't help but notice that Hannibal lets pomp and circumstance fall by the wayside, when Will is in need of comfort. 

_Too soon._

"I love gumbo," Will murmurs. "Didn't have it often, but every once in a while the mood would strike, and my dad would make a big batch of it. Usually, though, he would grill up whatever fish was the catch of the day, and he'd keep a stock of red beans in the freezer."

Will isn't even sure what he's trying to say. 

"Then I hope mine lives up to your expectations."

"My dad wasn't a very good cook." Will presses a kiss against the back of Hannibal's neck, then drops his arms and steps away. "Would it be rude if I changed into pajamas?"

"Not at all. You should wear whatever makes you comfortable." 

Will turns to find the dogs all sitting in orderly rows, eyes on Hannibal.

"What is _this?"_ Will asks, eyebrow raised. 

Hannibal turns to see what Will's referring to, then smiles. "I may be guilty of feeding them what I believe dog owners refer to as _people food."_

Will laughs. "Well, I'll leave you to your fan club, then."

__________

The call comes somewhere between very late and very early. The jangling, jaunty tune of Will's cell phone jolts him out of a very deep sleep, and in his disorientation it takes a minute for Will to even realize what woke him, in the dark. By the time his attention has zeroed in on his cell phone, grabbing at it with buttery hands, Hannibal must surely be awake, too. 

It's Jack -- as though anyone else would be calling at this hour. Will fumbles to answer. 

"Hello?" 

"I need you in Ellicott City five minutes ago." In the background, Will can hear sirens, shouts, and the hustle and bustle of an active crime scene.

Will sits up, rubs his eyes. "Is it the Ripper? Already?"

Will has been back in Wolf Trap for less than twelve hours. Jack, less than five -- not that he sounds like a man operating on approximately two hours, or less, of sleep. 

"Almost certainly,” Jack says, sounding as awake and alert as he would be at 4pm instead of 4am. “But I'll let you be the judge of that."

"What's the --" a yawn cuts Will's question in half "-- the address?"

"Main street. Look for all the lights."

"Right," Will replies, but Jack is already gone. 

The blankets rustle and then an arm snakes around Will's waist. "Work?"

"Yeah." Will rubs his eyes again, willing the adrenaline rush he typically gets from a case to hit him, but he's _exhausted._ He suspected that the Ripper would kill upon his return, but even still, he didn’t expect the turn-around time to be so _fast._ Will probably shouldn’t have had… was it two whiskies, or three? Will isn't hungover, just -- disoriented. Muzzy. Exhausted from traveling, from working, from drinking, from jetlag. 

The arm withdraws and the bedside table lamp clicks on. Hannibal blinks at the sudden light -- sudden, even though he was the one who turned it on -- and looks up at Will, face creased with pillow marks and eyes soft with sleep. "I'll make coffee," he says, clearly no more awake than Will. 

"You don't have to get up," Will says. It's a weekday, and Hannibal surely has patients to see today that he needs to be alert for.

Hannibal just shakes his head. "I am awake, regardless. I may as well make myself useful."

"I'm just gonna throw on clothes and go," Will says, levering himself out of bed. "As much as I want coffee, I can't wait."

“You can keep Jack waiting for ten extra minutes. The body won’t be going anywhere.”

Will pauses. 

“Your mind is an organ,” Hannibal continues, sensing Will’s hesitation. “Pushing your body beyond its natural limits will not do your abilities any favors. You need rest. In the absence of rest, you at the very least need food, and perhaps something caffeinated.”

Will sighs. “You’re right.” He blinks, rubs his eyes, and scrubs a hand through his hair -- trying to _wake up._

“Take a shower. I’ll make breakfast.”

  
  


Will finds Hannibal at the stove, a carton of eggs on the counter and a steaming cup of coffee waiting for Will. The dogs sit fanned in a patient semicircle, waiting to see if Hannibal drops anything. 

"You look better," Hannibal says, flipping an omelet into the air and catching it in the pan. Buster twitches in anticipation but nothing falls. 

"I feel awful," Will says, grabbing his coffee with both hands. 

If Will had been at a bar last night, he would have thought that someone slipped something in his drink. The world feels distant. Cotton. Like Will had been swimming at the bottom of the ocean, and Jack’s call yanked him straight to the surface -- he’s left suffering from the bends, or something like it. He hasn’t felt this badly upon waking since his brain was cooking in the throws of encephalitis. And even then, he was waking up on rooftops and down country roads, not his own bed. Stress, jetlag, sleep deprivation, and being woken in the middle of the night make for a terrible combination, apparently. 

"The most probable culprit is that Jack's call must have come at a poor time in your sleep cycle. He likely woke you from the middle of REM sleep, which commonly causes excessive grogginess and a difficulty regaining your bearings on the waking world. Your mind was in the middle of telling itself a story -- repackaging and conceptualizing the information from your day. Being woken in such a state makes it more difficult for your mind to recover, not only from the loss of sleep itself, but also from the categorization your mind needs to properly maintain itself." Hannibal lifts the pan from the stove and tips the omelet out onto a waiting plate. "Does Jack rouse you from sleep often?"

Hannibal's words are a lot for Will to process at once. "Um, not generally, no. People usually report bodies in the morning, not the middle of the night. It happens sometimes, though. Drunks wandering somewhere they shouldn't, security guards making their rounds." Hannibal turns off the burner and hands the omelet over to Will. “Not making one for yourself?”

“Not yet. It’s earlier than I would typically eat my breakfast. I can eat when I get home.”

“You should stay -” Will’s words are interrupted by a yawn, “- stay here. You don’t need to go home hours before the sun rises. Go back to bed, after I’m gone.”

“I could drive you,” Hannibal says, setting the plate on the counter in front of Will.

Will considers responding to Hannibal’s offer, but gets distracted by the logistics of breakfast. 

“Would I be a terrible heathen if I ate this here?”

Leaned up against the counter, coffee at one elbow, Hannibal in front of him, Will is too tired to move, to sit at the table and eat like a grown up. He doesn’t eat breakfast, most days. Couldn’t be bothered. But when he does, he usually eats standing up just like this: in his kitchen, plate in one hand and fork in the other. 

Hannibal hands over a fork and comes to lean against the counter next to Will.

“This is better than the table?” Hannibal asks, conversational the way that Bedelia asks things conversationally, sometimes.

Will shrugs, takes a bite of omelet. “It’s how I always eat breakfast.”

Hannibal nods, accepting the answer. “This is the third of the Ripper’s kills, is it not?”

“The third of his sounder, yeah.”

“Do you believe him to be finished?” Will casts Hannibal a sidelong glance, so Hannibal elaborates. “Sometimes the Ripper takes months or years off between sounders, if I remember correctly. Do you have any idea whether or not that will be the case, this time?”

Will knows his answer, but he takes a few seconds to eat another bite and chews to buy himself time. “I don’t think so,” he says, hedging his bets. “This time, the Ripper came back because he was responding to Abel Gideon’s claims, so I doubt he will go to ground again so quickly. He took a long break because he wasn’t… inspired. Interested.” 

The body on the church doors was _interested._ His focus on Will was _inspired,_ though Will hesitates to give voice to the thought. Something clenches in his gut at the realization that this may be it -- this kill may be a further effort to make contact with Will. There may be a sign, there, in the blood and viscera, that maybe -- _maybe_ \-- only Will could read. 

The thought shouldn't be exciting. The thought should bring only a churning dread, not this electric livewire that Will has been waiting for to cut through the grogginess since the call came in. _It’s like winning the elementary school talent show._ Will the Ripper have deemed Will worthy? Has the Ripper chosen Will as his equal?

Will finishes his omelet in a few over-large bites. 

“I should probably get going,” he says, draining the rest of his coffee and dropping the empty plate onto the counter. 

Hannibal stops him with a hand on his elbow. “Will,” he says, serious. 

The gravity of Hannibal’s tone is enough to draw Will’s attention back, bringing him around so that they’re face to face. Will expects Hannibal to tell him to take care, or to not allow Jack to bully him -- so he’s surprised when, instead, Hannibal cups his jaw with one hand and holds a finger in front of his face with the other. 

Will blinks, then focuses on the finger. Or, _tries_ to focus on the finger. It moves to the left, then to the right. 

“I don’t know that it’s safe for you to drive,” Hannibal says. And, if the difficulty Will had tracking the movement of Hannibal’s finger is anything to go by, he’s right. 

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Will says, closing his eyes. “I feel….” Drugged, almost, though he would never say that to Hannibal -- Hannibal is the only person he was with, last night, so obviously _that’s_ not the cause. Will doesn’t even want to entertain the possibility of another brain disease -- he’s not sick, won’t be sick, _can’t_ be sick. 

It’s the jetlag. 

It’s the sleep deficit. 

It’s that sleep cycle thing, that Hannibal mentioned. 

He’s not sick.

He’s _not_ sick.

“I won’t ask you to make introductions.”

Will shakes his head. With Hannibal’s hand still on his face, it turns out to be more of a nuzzle, but he hopes the point comes across, regardless.

“It’s not that. It’s -” Will swallows. “I’m, um.” What was he saying? What are they _talking_ about? Right -- Jack, Hannibal, in the same place for the first time. Truthfully, he doesn’t want to make introductions. Won’t, obviously, over a Ripper kill. “I’m not worried about people seeing you,” he says, the words unreasonably difficult to string together. “I feel terrible. And I’m just worried. About my brain.”

Hannibal steps closer, intimate, and presses his forehead against Will’s. The hand on his jaw slides back to cup the back of his head, touch gentle but secure. Grounding. 

“Your brain is fine. If you’re feeling badly in a day or two I’ll take you to the doctor, but I stand by my earlier statement: you were likely woken in an inopportune time in your REM cycle, which is compounded by your travels. What timezone is Wichita?”

Will snorts. “I don’t even know. You’re right, I’m being dramatic.”

“Let me drive you to your crime scene.”

“Okay.”

Hannibal kisses Will, chaste, but lingering. Then he steps back, out of Will’s personal space, and attends to the things around the kitchen: the pan, plate, fork all go in the sink, and then he opens a cabinet door and pulls out a thermos that Will didn’t even know he _had_. Travel coffee goes in the travel mug. And then, finally, a small piece of meat for every well-behaved dog waiting patiently -- so, each of them, one at a time. 

“Ready?” Hannibal asks, as though they’re preparing to leave his own home and not Will’s.

To see the latest Ripper kill? To face Jack, who will be cranky, sleep deprived, and hopped up on adrenaline?

Will shrugs.

“As I’ll ever be, I suppose.”

__________

On the sidewalk facing the street is an ornate wooden chair; in the chair sits the body of a woman. Her abdomen yawns open from hip to hip. Her intestines drape artfully over her lap, spilling over her knees and onto the ground, as well as around her back and over her shoulder -- like a robe, or a shawl. Her head -- eyes open, wreathed in small golden flowers -- tilts down and to the left, and her hands clutch a long white bone -- a scepter.

"The bone?" Will asks.

"Her tibia, as far as we can tell," Jack says from Will's right elbow.

The viscera obscures the further mutilation, but now that Will looks for it, the left leg is clearly amputated at the knee. 

"What else was taken?"

"We can't say for certain until this mess has been inventoried, but we know he took everything below the knee, other than that bone," _muscle, sinew, foot, ankle, fibula,_ "and her liver appears to be missing as well."

Will nods. "This looks like a Renaissance painting." 

The striking resemblance to a Renaissance painting is the most obvious detail, on the surface. Last kill was Shakespeare, and not long before that, the wound man. This kill is... something else. Some callback to a famous piece of culture or art. Something beautiful. Something _inspiring._

"I thought that too," Jack says, grim. "I already have people trying to find the source, assuming there is one."

Whatever the callback is supposed to be, Will doesn't know it. If there's a message in this kill, Will can't read it -- at least, not yet. Maybe the identity of the victim holds some secret, some clue. That, or the true meaning is something more obscure, something more delicate, something more _intimate._

Something, something, something. 

_What are you trying to tell me? What do you want me to know?_

The crime scene feels like a test. 

"The chair?"

"Most likely taken from the antique store."

Will's eyes flick to the stone building behind the body. Sure enough, it's an antique store, probably chock full of pieces just like this one. 

"Any connection to the shop?"

"Nothing obvious," Jack says, "but when we have an ID on the body we'll run it against their employee roster and any regular customers."

Will looks over at Jack. "Clear the scene?"

The scene is already cleared -- all of the techs wait anxiously around the fringes, combing for evidence that they know won't be there. The only person in Will's immediate vicinity is Jack, who nods and ambles off, barking orders that Will doesn't bother listening to.

Will closes his eyes.

The pendulum swings.

_Nothing._

  
  


"What do you mean you don't know?"

Later, after the scene has been bagged and tagged and everything has been transported to Quantico, Will sits shamefaced across the desk from Jack.

"I don't know, Jack. I have a hard time reading the Ripper, you _know_ that."

"That's not what happened last time."

"The Ripper left a message specifically for me, last time, and if you remember correctly you said that you didn't want that to happen again." Will spreads his hands out in front of him, a _so there_ gesture. "And it didn't happen again. You should be glad."

Jack scowls. Will knows that Jack doesn't want the Ripper paying special attention to Will, and yet Jack would sacrifice more than Will's sanity to get a usable lead on the Ripper. 

Will slumps back in his chair, rubs his eyes. "Any hits on the painting theory?"

"Yes, actually." Jack opens a folder on his desk, plucks out a glossy color photograph, and holds it out for Will to take.

"You didn't think I should know about this until now?"

Jack doesn't even have the decency to look contrite. "I wanted to see what you would come up with on your own."

Will sighs and gives Jack a _look,_ but takes the photo from his outstretched hand anyway. 

"Sandro Botticelli's _Fortitude,_ painted in 1470. We can't be sure, but it's our best match."

The photo bears a striking resemblance to the crime scene -- or, the crime scene bears a striking resemblance to the painting. All the details are there -- woman, ornate chair, scepter, red draping robe, golden crown. There's no ambiguity, no doubt.

"This is it," Will says, sure.

"There are a lot of paintings of people sitting in chairs with a red robe and a scepter," Jack says, but Will is already shaking his head. 

"This is it."

"How do you know?"

"I just know." 

Jack raises an eyebrow. 

"I just know, Jack. The details are too spot on. Look at the hands, the way the fingers are splayed -- they're the same."

The right hand curls around the scepter, thumb resting on the rod, while the scepter runs between the left index and ring finger. Casual, almost careless -- yet exactly the same. 

Exactly like the body.

Botticelli, too, seems like the exact kind of ornate historical artist that would catch the Ripper's eye. If the inspiration had been deemed a Rothko, Will may have had his doubts, but this? This feels _right._

"Could it be referencing something else, other than just the painting? Does this..." Will shakes his head, frustrated, "I don't know... bear similarity to any other notable crimes?" 

Will has expected insight to come in a flash of understanding, not… this. A seemingly unremarkable painting by a Renaissance master, one that bears no immediate connection to Will, or to death. 

The devil is in the details, and the Ripper never skimps on details. Will just doesn't know how to read them. 

"Nothing that seemed related. There was a string of Botticelli-inspired murders in Italy in the early 80's that was solved in a pretty open-and-shut case. Other than that, there have been a few copycats, some vandalism. Nothing that seems connected to _this_ case."

Will stares down at the painting. It's a funhouse mirror, twisted and distorted. As far as they know, the Ripper has never acted as a copycat before, and this seems like an odd time to start -- after making contact with Will, after issuing a challenge. No, there’s something else to it, something that they haven’t quite pinned down. 

"So: fortitude," Jack says, clearly steering the conversation back to where he thinks it should be. "One of the four cardinal virtues: prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice. Also called courage, forbearance, or strength. What do we think? Is he calling the victim a coward?"

"Maybe?" Even as Will says it, he doesn't really believe it. 

Jack leans back in his chair, fingers steepled. "This could be the biggest change in the Ripper's MO, ever."

"I don't think that's what this is, Jack." Whatever the message is, it's not -- that. The message is for Will's eyes, and Will's eyes alone _(if there is one)._ But this theory? Low-hanging fruit. The Ripper's kills should be getting more sophisticated as time goes on, not less. 

"We can't overlook the significance," Jack says, steamrolling. "The last victim was a ladder-climbing wannabe, and apparently the Ripper didn't like that. You said yourself that the victim's character was important." Will actually hadn't said that, precisely, but he doesn't have time to correct before Jack continues. "Now, this time, we have something clear-cut. Fortitude. A virtue, spoiled. We _cannot_ overlook that."

Will opens his mouth, closes it again. "What do you think?" he asks instead. 

"I want to know what _you_ think," Jack says, following his words with an emphatic pointed finger at Will.

"You already know what I think."

"All you've said is that you didn't get a read off the crime scene."

"No," Will says, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes. "Just now, I _just said_ that I don't think that this is a commentary on the victim."

"Well I do."

Will shrugs. "Then you run the show, Jack. If there's something you want to say, then just say it."

Will takes his time putting his glasses back on to avoid having to look at Jack, and is met with a stony silence. When he looks at Jack, glasses back in place, he gets a raised eyebrow. 

"What," Jack says, low and ostensibly patient, "is going on with you?"

"Nothing."

The eyebrow climbs higher.

Will thinks, for a second, about arguing, but the fight leaves him all at once. "You're right," he says instead. "There's something different about the victim." _There isn't._ "And there may be some connection to the motive." _There won't be._ "I'm just... frustrated. I didn't get a lot of sleep last night, and I don't know what to do with a change in the Ripper's patterns. You think this has something to do with cowardice?"

"The victim was a member of a multi-level marketing scheme selling essential oils...." 

Jack keeps talking, but Will stops listening. If the MLM had absolutely anything to do with the Ripper, it was, at best, because she annoyed him with it; at worst, Jack is sending them down a frivolous path that has nothing to do with their crime or their killer. 

The headache Will woke up with presses on his eyes and looms around his temples. 

Will nods at the right points, shrugs a few times. Sometimes arguing with Jack is pointless -- and, maybe, this will give Will the free space to follow his instincts, without Jack breathing down his neck, micromanaging his every fleeting thought. 

"Take that home," Jack says finally, nodding at the photo in Will's hand. "Sleep on it. And call me the instant you have a better idea."

__________

Will arrives home to an empty house, dropped off by Beverly on her way home. Of course -- Hannibal has to work, and they don't live together. He's not disappointed. In fact, Will would have had to ask Hannibal to leave, if he had still been here. Will's loose tongue is one thing; showing case files and crime scene photos to a civilian would be something else entirely. If he's lucky, he'll have that _ah ha!_ moment tonight. That breakthrough that evaded him at the crime scene, during his conversation with Jack, and evades him even now. He'll have his moment, and then he'll drive up to Baltimore and spend the rest of his evening sneaking tastes of Hannibal's cooking. 

Unlikely. The Chesapeake Ripper wasn't quite as transparent this time as he was in the last crime scene.

In search of a beer, Will opens his refrigerator and finds, instead, the top shelf filled with unfamiliar glass food containers, each meticulously packed and labeled with Hannibal's familiar script.

Will fishes his phone out of his pocket, hits _call._

"Hello, Will."

"You don't have to feed me, you know."

"I enjoy feeding you. And having seen the contents of your refrigerator, I couldn't bear the thought of you subsisting on gas station burritos while working these coming days."

"I -" _love you._ Will swallows, and tries again. "Thanks." 

The first container says _New Orleans Gumbo._

"How was your crime scene?"

"Interesting. Confusing."

Winston whines, and the sound breaks Will out of the trance-like state he had fallen into, staring at Hannibal's penmanship. He grabs a beer and closes the door. 

"Enough to solve your case?"

"Almost definitely not," Will laughs, popping the cap off his beer, "unless the techs come through with some piece of trace evidence they bagged. But I'm not holding my breath."

"Then I suppose it's wishful thinking that has me hoping to see you again soon."

Will pauses to calculate his schedule, over the next few days. "How's your Thursday?"

"Clear, though closer to today than I would have imagined. I assumed that the third of the sounder would require more care."

"We're not solving this case right now," Will says, taking a sip of beer. "Not with what we have. And definitely not with the... _tangent_ that Jack is taking us down."

"You had a disagreement?"

"A difference of opinions." Will glances at the case file, staring accusatorily at him from the table. "So, Thursday? I'll try to be there before 8."

"I'll be waiting."

"Bye, Hannibal."

"Take care."

Will pockets his phone. Takes a sip of beer, looks at the case file. 

He really should get to work.

Instead, Will spends the next hour opening, unblocking, and cleaning out his chimney. 

__________

Will reads about Botticelli until the name looks like gibberish -- about his most famous paintings, _The Birth of Venus_ and _Primavera,_ about his life, about his history -- but nothing jumps out at Will as being _important._ Meaningful. _Fortitude_ isn't even one of Botticelli's more famous paintings, notable only because it was Botticelli's earliest.

Will switches tracks and reads about sins and virtues until his head aches and his eyes burn, but insight doesn't come. 

__________

Inside his office, Will shuffles files from his briefcase to his desk drawer, head down and seemingly oblivious to the rest of the world. Alana waits for a few seconds to see if he'll notice her, but no -- he's clearly lost in thought, so she raps her knuckles on the open door frame to get his attention. Will's head pops up at the sound, eyes wide. His expression slides from startled to resigned, a clear indicator that Alana coming to see him is long overdue.

"Hey," she says, gentle, like he's a spooked horse. "How are you holding up?"

Will drops his final file into the desk drawer. "Fine."

Alana waits. 

"Tired," he amends. "Frustrated. Trying to get the hell out of here."

"Rushing to a hot date, or are you just trying to avoid Jack?"

Will runs a hand through his hair, and Alana can see him weighing whether or not he wants to lie to her. 

In the end, he shrugs. "Little bit of column A, little bit of column B."

"You have a minute?" Will wavers, so she continues, "I promise to keep it short."

"Sure. Come on in, close the door."

Will comes around and perches, half-sitting, on the front left corner of the desk. Alana closes the door and mirrors him on the right. 

(Will has an easier time talking when he doesn't have to try to pretend to make eye contact.)

"You know, I've never been to your office before."

" _I_ barely come to my office, so." 

Will's office is a small, windowless room buried in the bowels of Quantico. Alana had to search for it on a map after she couldn't find Will in his classroom, and even still she made two wrong turns trying to get here. Alana suspects that Will only actually comes here when he doesn't want to be found. 

Will clears his throat. "Do we need to talk about it?"

He means their kiss, if the awkward look on his face is anything to go by. 

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really, but... it might help," he says with a shrug. "Clear the air."

"Okay."

"I probably shouldn't have done it."

"Will..."

Will shakes his head. "I don't mean that in a self-deprecating way. You and me... we wouldn't have worked out. You could see that. Hell, I could see that too, but I wasn't in the right headspace to make good choices at the time."

"And are you in a better place now?"

"You know? I actually am."

Will looks good. Usually, when wrapped up in an ugly case, Will ends up looking gaunt and haggard, bags under his eyes and skin tinged with grey. With the Chesapeake Ripper back Alana had expected to find him half-dead and wild-eyed, but instead he looks healthy and surprisingly normal. 

"I'm glad," Alana says, and she means it. "I do like you, Will. I just think that neither of us are in the right places in our lives for it to work out."

_It_ being some kind of romance between them.

"Maybe, in some alternate universe, alternate versions of ourselves are having a very different conversation right now," Will says with a grin, but there's no flirtatiousness in the expression, only friendship.

"Maybe."

"I'm... seeing someone, actually."

Even having alluded to a date, Alana is still surprised that he actually came out and said it. 

"Someone that's a better fit for you than I am?"

Will nods. "It's the best relationship I've ever been in, actually." He glances over at her, then away again. "You don't seem surprised."

"Jack has been asking," she replies, honest. At Will's frown, she adds, "since Columbia."

"Ah."

"I didn't tell him anything."

Will shrugs. "Nothing for you to tell."

"I suppose not."

Will taps his fingers in an irregular pattern against the desk. Alana is about to change the subject to the Chesapeake Ripper case, when Will speaks again. 

"He's a doctor." At Alana's smile, Will continues, "I met him at the opera."

Alana can't help her startled laughter. Going to the opera is so _unlike_ Will that it's the last thing she expected him to say.

"I know, I can barely believe it either. B-" Will cuts himself off, "- my psychiatrist told me to go, get myself out of my comfort zone, meet new people with no _expectations_ of me."

"Seems like it worked."

"Seems like it did."

"I'm happy for you though," she says. "Seriously. And I won't say anything to Jack."

Will sighs. "I'm not hiding it, I'm just..." 

"Jack is someone that you don't want in your personal business?"

"Yeah, you could say that. I'd fully expect Jack to show up on his doorstep if I wasn't answering my phone."

Alana snorts -- they both know that that's _exactly_ what Jack would do. 

"Well, if you're ever ready to make introductions, I would love to meet him."

"Yeah, I, uh..." Will shakes his head. "I'll keep that in mind."

"Believe it or not, I actually came down here to see how you're holding up with the case. I know Jack has been... stressful."

"Now there's an understatement," Will mutters. "Believe it or not, I can handle Jack."

Six months ago, Alana would have called that statement out for the lie that it would have been. But when she had arrived on campus an hour ago, the first thing Jack said to her was _do you have any idea what's gotten into Will?_ so it seems like Will's telling the truth. 

"Confidence is a good look on you," she says finally.

Will laughs. "I'm trying it on for size. And hey, I just might buy it." Will runs a hand through his hair, seemingly weighing his words. "Listen... I don't want things to be awkward."

"I agree."

"So we're... good?"

"We're good."

Regardless of attraction, Alana had gotten over the kiss about a day and a half after it happened. But then Will had been avoiding her, and then after a while she was avoiding being alone with Will, and at some point it became a snowballed event of out-sized proportions. She didn't know what Will's feelings were, and she wanted to discourage any lingering what-ifs, and sometimes the easiest way of dealing with things is to not deal with them at all. 

There's only so much mental bandwidth that Alana can dedicate to romantic endeavors, and Will just hasn't been the most pressing issue in her life. 

"Beverly, ah... Beverly mentioned. You know, _after,_ that..."

Alana cocks her head. "Whatever it is you want to say, you can say it. I'm a big girl."

Will takes a breath and tries again. "Beverly said something along the lines of _with you on board, Jack is the only straight person on the team._ But you're, you know. Not always on the team. So I wasn't sure if you were _on_ the team. So to speak."

Alana dissolves into laughter.

"You are _not_ smooth," she says between helpless giggles. 

"I'm not," Will says, cringing. "Help me, I'm floundering."

"For all intents and purposes, I am _on_ the team, not that Beverly has any reason to know that."

"She's more observant than you might think."

"Apparently.” They grin at each other, for a moment, both caught in the inherent foolishness of their conversation. “All right,” Alana says, standing up, “I promised that I wouldn't take up too much of your time, and I know you have a hot date to get to, so on that note I think I'll take my leave."

Will grins, easygoing in a way they have never been together. 

"You sticking around here, or are you headed home?"

"Oh you couldn't pay me to linger here with Jack stomping around."

"Then we might as well walk out together."

Will grabs his empty briefcase, locks the office door, and Alana thinks _yeah, Will's gonna be all right._

__________

"Did you divine a message in the latest kill?" Hannibal asks once Will has dragged himself to Hannibal's dinner table. 

Will swirls a piece of pork around the sauce on his plate and debates how to answer. 

"Jack thinks it's some kind of critique of the victim, something that could give us a motive." If Jack were right, that would be quite the victory -- so far there has been no discernible motive on any of the kills, other than Miriam Lass and the Freddie Lounds wannabe. 

(He’s not right, though, Will is sure of that.)

Hannibal tilts his head. "I didn't ask for Jack's opinion."

Will takes his bite, chews slowly, swallows deliberately. 

"I don't know." 

For some reason, admitting ignorance -- _failure_ \-- to Hannibal pains Will more than saying the same to Jack.

"You will."

The confidence in Hannibal's voice draws Will's attention off of his plate and onto Hannibal. 

Hannibal smiles, and Will, helplessly, smiles back.

__________

"How have you been sleeping?" 

Bedelia asks the question in the same bland, even tone that she asks all of her leading questions in, but this time the query stops Will short. 

"Better, actually," Will says, thinking over the past few weeks.

"You seem," Bedelia says, "more alert. More awake, than you did even a few months ago, and yet you seemed surprised by my question."

"I... guess I didn't notice?" 

That should be impossible, and yet.... 

"When was your last nightmare?"

Will combs over the last days, weeks. "Probably..." he shakes his head, shrugging, "I don't know, two or three weeks ago?"

He’s had some strange dreams -- not quite nightmares, but not quite normal, either. The stag -- of course, always the stag -- but there, too, a black humanoid figure with a crown of antlers. Always off to the side, watching. Waiting, for something unknown. The figure should be frightening, but somehow isn’t. The _threat_ is there. Will knows, just by seeing the figure out of the corner of his eye, that it’s dangerous. Malicious. But not to Will, somehow. 

(Will knows, too, deep down, that the figure is his mental manifestation of the Chesapeake Ripper. That he dreams of it after Ripper cases, that he sees that shadowy figure in his mind’s eye while hunting for Jack’s white whale. He’s not quite ready to admit to Bedelia that he feels safe around the figure, like it means him no harm. It _should_ mean him harm. It must. And yet Will’s subconscious has not led him astray yet.)

Bedelia raises an eyebrow. She can probably tell that he’s not telling the whole truth, but too bad -- some things Will needs to keep to himself. Some things, Will doesn’t want to share, because he would have to give name to them. Justification. He would have to admit a borderline-unhealthy attachment to one of the most dangerous people he’s ever encountered.

"That's a good thing, right?" Will asks, defiant. 

"Of course," Bedelia says. "Though curious that you had not noticed on your own."

"I've been distracted, I guess."

"By work, or by more personal matters?"

"...Personal matters," he says, but he can tell that Bedelia doesn’t entirely believe him. 

"So you have something that keeps your mind off of your work. Perhaps your subconscious, in addition to your conscious mind."

Will taps his fingertips on the armrest. "So does this mean I was right?"

Bedelia cocks her head. "Right about what?"

"Back before, when I was... single." They still don't talk about how he and Hannibal got together, not directly. "I said that I thought being in a relationship would help me… cope, or whatever you want to call it.”

“Do not allow yourself to fall into a false sense of security. You appear to be,” she says, “rather cocky about your own state of mind. Have you truly learned better coping mechanisms, or are you relying on external validation?”

“I’m not…” Will sputters, “being _validated._ ”

“Aren’t you?”

Will taps his fingers against his knee. “Even if I _am_ being validated, does it matter? It’s about focus, right? About security, about… _acceptance._ I found someone who accepts me for who I am, and…” Will sighs, running out of steam mid-sentence. “And now I sleep better, I guess.”

Bedelia responds with silence for one beat, two beats, three. 

“And are you being validated,” Bedelia asks, “by your partner, or by your killer?”

Will’s eyes snap up to hers.

“Don’t answer,” she says, looking at the clock. Their hour is up. “Think on it.”

__________

"Do you ever have regrets?" Will asks.

Will has had an eye on the calendar for weeks, today's date approaching with inexorable slowness and blink-and-you'll-miss-it rapidity at the same time. He thought about taking the day off of work, today. He thought about holing himself up with his dogs and a bottle of whisky. He even thought about making a special appointment with Bedelia, but while that may be the healthiest option, it's the one that was least appealing. Coming to see Hannibal seemed like a happy middle ground -- not alone, but not pathological. 

Will likes to think that he's developed better coping mechanisms in the last year. 

"No," Hannibal says. 

Will had been quiet all throughout dinner, so Hannibal had graciously carried the conversation from appetizers through now, sitting with after-dinner drinks. Will doesn't know if Hannibal knows the date. The significance. Doesn't quite know if he wants to explain it, even though he probably should. Communication, Will knows, is the most important factor in successful relationships, but somehow he can't force his mouth around the words. 

"Never?"

"Regret serves no useful purpose. An action, once done, cannot be undone. To dwell on an unchangeable past does the mind no favors. My time is better spent arranging a more rewarding future."

"I can't imagine living that way," Will says. "I am riddled with regrets."

There are so _many_ things that Will knows he could have done differently, throughout his life, and working with the BAU has pushed that tendency into overdrive. His every working day is life or death. If he screws up a profile, people die. If he's too slow, people die. Even if he's fast enough, sometimes the people _still die._ It's -- a lot. A lot of responsibility, a lot to regret. The cases where he saves the day don't successfully counterbalance the cases where he could have done better. 

"I very rarely regret my actions," Hannibal says, "but when I do, there's a very simple exercise I perform to release those regrets. I take a tea cup, one that's both beautiful and fragile, and I drop it on the ground, shattering it. Then, I regret what I've done -- the destruction of something beautiful. I wait for that regret to make the teacup come back together. When that doesn't work, I sweep up the pieces of my regret and I discard them, freeing my mind of their influence."

Will can see it in his mind's eye -- Hannibal's hand releasing some ornate, fragile thing. The porcelain falling to the ground in slow motion, shattering into dozens, _hundreds_ of pieces. 

"Emotions are more complicated than that."

"Only if you allow them to be," Hannibal concedes. "Is it not better to wrest control over your emotions, than to allow your emotions to take control from you?"

Will shrugs. _Wresting control_ of Will's emotions seems more like lassoing a charging bull on the best of days. 

"Is this about Abigail Hobbs?"

Will nods. Sometimes, the fact that Hannibal reads Tattlecrime grates on Will's exposed nerves. Sometimes, the fact that Hannibal always knows the details of Will's work life without being told is a godsend. 

"Garret Jacob Hobbs died one year ago today," Will says finally. "And Abigail has been in a coma for one year, as of today."

"And how does that make you feel?"

"Guilty."

"Guilty because you were unable to save her?"

"Guilty because I feel like I killed her."

"She may yet wake."

"She may."

Some days, Will hopes that Abigail will open her eyes like nothing strange ever happened. That she will go off to college, free of her father's terrible influence. That she could escape the shadow that will forever taint her family name. Other days, Will hopes that her eyes stay closed forever. That she never has to be questioned by the FBI, that she never has to defend herself against Jack's suspicions. 

"Garret Jacob Hobbs loved his daughter more than anything," Will says finally. "Killing her without honoring her would have been murder."

That fact is the most telling feature of _that day._ It’s the detail that Will has turned over and over in his mind, wearing smooth like a stone at the bottom of a river. He’s approached it from every angle -- considered it from every direction, every motive, every truth. It’s kept him awake at night. Given him nightmares. Altered how he thought about the case, Hobbs, Abigail. Looking at that truth for long enough gives only one result. Only one motive, only one reason. 

Will has never admitted that truth to anyone, not even Bedelia. Hasn’t really wanted to. 

But.

He finds himself wanting to share that burden with Hannibal. To let Hannibal carry some of its weight. 

"And yet he cut her throat with the FBI at his door. What drove him to such an act? Panic?"

Will shakes his head. "Love," he says. "Always love."

"Then why do such a thing?"

Will has denied, and denied, and denied. To Jack, to Alana, to the media. Any time anyone asks about Abigail's involvement, Will says the Garret Jacob Hobbs acted alone. Hunted alone. Will says it, and will keep saying it, on the off chance that Abigail ever wakes. It's the only thing left that he can do to protect her.

"Abigail hunted with her father." Deer, but Will trusts Hannibal to understand what he still won't say aloud. "He tried to kill her because it was the only way he had left to protect her."

"From Jack."

Will nods, once. 

"I got too close to Garret Jacob Hobbs." _See,_ Hobbs had said, _See?_ "I haven't done that since. I don't know why I couldn't keep my distance. Can't... _detangle_ myself from him."

"Is Hobbs the first person you've killed?"

"The only."

"Do you feel guilty for killing him?"

Will shakes his head. Finally, an easy question.

"No. Killing him felt... good. It felt right. I feel guilty for failing to save Abigail." The other truth -- the darker, more sinister truth -- curdles around the edges of Will's words. "I also feel guilty for failing to kill her."

Hannibal stays silent for a long moment, but his silence doesn't feel judgmental. He seems to be considering his response. Considering, too, whether or not Will is ready to hear whatever Hannibal has to say. 

"Do you believe some of this guilt is caused by a job unfinished?"

It takes a moment for Will to process what Hannibal is really asking. Hannibal's real question, the one that he, too, won't say directly, is whether or not killing Abigail would make Will feel better, make him able to put the whole episode behind him. Will very nearly balks, reflexive, but he reigns in the impulse. Hannibal is just -- asking. Without judgement, without censure. Will should probably give the question the honest consideration it deserves. 

"No," Will says. "I don't want Abigail to be dead. If she were to wake up tomorrow, I would want...." Will trails off, thinking of his wildest fantasies. "I would want to take her away from all of this. Protect her from Jack. Take her somewhere like Maine, somewhere remote. Teach her how to fish."

"You would like to be the father that Garret Jacob Hobbs was not."

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Will’s fantasy sounds so _reasonable,_ when Hannibal words it like that.

“You want to whisk her away to safety, even knowing that she is a serial killer.”

Will could deny the accusation, like he has every other time someone has had the audacity to say that in front of him. He could, but he won’t. Not to Hannibal. It’s not like Hannibal is going to report him, or Abigail -- not like anything can even be _done_ to a teenager in a coma, who gets less and less likely to ever wake with every day that she fails to. 

“I don’t care about that.”

Will sneaks a glance at Hannibal, unsure of how he’ll take Will’s revelation, but Hannibal’s face is unreadable. Then, Hannibal stands. For a fleeting moment, Will thinks the other man disgusted, horrified -- but no. Hannibal crosses the room, takes something out of a cabinet, and then returns to Will’s side. Hannibal sets a black box on Will’s lap, and gestures at him to open it. 

Will takes the lid off, wary, and reveals a beautiful, delicate tea set. Four cups and a small pot. The ceramic is matte black, clearly handmade, and hand-inked with red Japanese calligraphy. 

"Emotions are seldom logical, even when they feel that way,” Hannibal says. “Too often they are reactionary, uncontrolled, and actively harmful. One of the most difficult lessons that people must learn is to differentiate between those feelings which help nurture them, as opposed to those which hinder progress. It is not within your power to make Abigail wake,” Hannibal points out, though conversely it would be within Will’s power to ensure she never does, “and so your only course of action is to move on. A visual can help. So can a physical action, one that takes the negative feeling and removes it.”

“Hannibal….” Will runs his fingers over the cups. They’re smooth, small. He could cradle one easily in the palm of his hand. “I can’t take this.”

“I insist.”

Will shakes his head. “These are too nice to destroy. _If_ I wanted to… to _do_ that, I could buy something cheap -”

“To buy something cheap discredits your feelings for Abigail, and defeats the purpose of the exercise. A precious item, for a precious regret. That you’re uncomfortable with breaking these makes them all the more suited to that very use. Smash your teacup, Will.”

Will bites his lip and looks down at the tea set again. To his horror, his vision starts to blur with tears, so he closes his eyes -- he doesn't want Hannibal to see, to _know,_ to _deal_ with Will at his craziest. 

"Will," Hannibal says softly. He inhales to continue, obviously on the verge of speech, and then must reconsider whatever he was about to say, because instead Hannibal says nothing. He wraps an arm around Will's back and they sit in silence for a few moments. 

Will isn't sure if the fact that Hannibal is _also_ out of his depth makes him feel better, or much, much worse. 

"Letting go of your regrets does not mean letting go of Abigail. Your regret is for your own actions; what you did, and also what you did not do. Compartmentalizing your trauma will not erase Abigail from your mind, and it certainly will not remove the feelings you have for her."

Will nods, still too choked up to attempt speech.

"Maine is not very far, and Jack Crawford has a long reach," Hannibal says. The statement is so unexpected that Will looks over at Hannibal, torn between confusion and incredulity. He's not sure _what_ expression he has on his face, but whatever it is, it makes Hannibal smile. "Running away to Maine will not keep Abigail safe from Jack, if she were to wake," Hannibal elaborates. "Ireland is geographically quite similar, and well outside of Jack's jurisdiction."

Will opens his mouth, closes it. 

"Ireland has extradition policies, but those would require Jack to have concrete evidence that Abigail committed a crime beyond a reasonable doubt, which would be rather difficult for him to obtain. And many countries that lack the death penalty will not extradite to a country that does."

Will blinks. "Ireland doesn't really have the same forests as Maine does," he says, somewhat nonsensically. "For -- hunting."

"Eastern Europe, then," Hannibal continues, unfazed. "I spent my youth running through untamed wilderness and old growth forests. We could take Abigail there."

_We._

Will leans into Hannibal's embrace. _We._ Hannibal can't _really_ be entertaining the idea of running away with a serial killer to Europe, can he? Maybe he's just -- humoring Will, trying to make Will feel better.

(Will dismisses the thought as soon as it crosses his mind. Hannibal doesn't _do_ humoring. He wouldn't have said it if he didn't mean it.)

"Do you trust me?" Hannibal asks.

Will nods, which ends up being more of a nuzzle against Hannibal’s shoulder.

"Should Abigail wake, and should she be willing to leave, I can handle the arrangements. Will you allow me to carry this burden for you?"

Will thinks about it -- _really_ thinks about it. If Abigail were to wake, and Jack were to question her, suspect her... they couldn't just get on an international flight. They would need fake passports, safe transport, somewhere to actually _go_ once they land in relative obscurity. Will never bothered to map logistics for his fantasy beyond _get in a car and drive,_ because it's always been just that: a _fantasy._ He honestly wouldn't even begin to know how to smuggle a wanted killer out of the country, and Will has his doubts that Hannibal would, either. 

But if Hannibal says he can, then he can. If Hannibal says he will, then he _will._ Hannibal wouldn't make false promises to make Will feel better.

(Will doesn't know if _that_ makes him feel better or not.)

"Yeah," Will croaks. He clears his throat, and tries again. "Yeah, if that -- you can."

"Thank you," Hannibal says, pressing a kiss to the crown of Will's head. "In the meanwhile, unless and until she wakes...." Hannibal taps the forgotten tea set, still balanced in Will's lap. "You did all that you could for her, and you have done all that you can for her. Now all that's left is to let go."

__________

Will breaks his teacup, and feels better.

__________

"I am concerned about your health,” Hannibal says rather unexpectedly one night. 

Will frowns. "Mental, or physical?" 

Will had been on high alert, for the few days following the third Ripper kill, but Hannibal was right -- whatever mental problems he was suffering from resolved themselves after a good night’s rest. And oddly enough, he’s felt pretty good since then. Maybe it’s because he’s been getting better sleep than he used to, or eating a better diet with Hannibal in his life. Or maybe it’s improving that work-life balance that wellness gurus always seem to be talking about. 

"Both,” Hannibal says. “Mental strain often manifests itself in physical symptoms, and stress is a common culprit of lowered immune response. You're running yourself ragged. I would not be surprised if you fell ill again.”

Will thinks back to the last few weeks, and okay, he can see that from Hannibal’s perspective, he _has_ been busy. With the Chesapeake Ripper killing again, Will has been working the longest hours he ever has for the BAU -- but what Hannibal _doesn’t_ see is how much worse the job used to be, before Will had met him. When Will was sick, when Will had nothing in his life other than the bureau and his dogs. 

Even working twelve hours a day for days at a time, Will has never felt quite so alive. Has never felt quite so present, quite so _real._

"I don't really have much of a choice,” Will says, deflecting, unable to put any of that into words. How do you tell someone that hunting a killer like the Chesapeake Ripper is a _thrill?_ Almost an honor? 

Will knows it would sound crazy. 

Will _knows_ that he should, by any sane measure, be worn out by the case and terrified of the Ripper. The fact that he’s neither says something about his life with Hannibal, about the Ripper, or _both._

"Of course you do. You make the choice for your heavy workload, and you can likewise make the choice to lighten it."

Will doesn’t _think_ that Hannibal is jealous of his time spent at work -- Hannibal doesn’t really _do_ jealousy, anyway, and has always been supportive of Will’s job, in his own way. 

Maybe… maybe Hannibal _does_ have a point. Will _has_ been spending a lot of time in the field, with Jack, chasing after leads and trying to draw conclusions. Will did spend entire _days_ pacing around his house, trying to make connections between the tabloid journalist and _Fortitude,_ yanking at his hair and trying to make sense of the Ripper’s message. 

Will isn’t ready to talk frankly with Hannibal about the Ripper, though. Not now, maybe not ever. 

_Maybe the Ripper likes winding you up,_ Bedelia had said, and Will can’t help but worry that she was right. 

"If I do, people will die," Will says with a shrug, as though altruism is his driving force, "and it'll be my fault. So the choice is a little less clear than it looks."

"That is Jack Crawford talking. Tell me, Will, is the man who fails to jump in front of a firing gun responsible for the shooting?"

Will rolls his eyes. "That's different."

"Is it? The work that you do comes at great personal cost to yourself -- there's little point in attempting to deny that."

Will doesn't attempt to deny that. Can't. 

At Will's silence, Hannibal continues, "You need not throw yourself on every sword in the country. They were able to catch killers before you began working for the BAU, and they will continue to do so long after you have gone. Jack Crawford acts as though you are the only person capable of saving lives because he knows that feelings of guilt and responsibility are the best way to manipulate you into doing what he wants. Tell me, how long has Jack Crawford been working for the BAU?"

"About twenty years, I think," Will says.

"And how long have you?"

"...a little over a year."

"And how many killers has Jack Crawford caught in the nineteen years that you were not working for him?"

Will's silence is his answer.

"I have no desire to devalue your work, nor am I attempting to dismiss your accomplishments. I am merely pointing out that Jack Crawford uses the threat of innocent victims to keep you at his beck and call. You are merely doing him a favor by consulting for the BAU. He can only demand from your time that which you are willing to give."

“I’ll think about it,” Will says. 

__________

"Sometimes," Will tells Bedelia, "with all of the darkness that I deal with, day in and day out, I feel like I don't deserve nice things."

"Hannibal is not a nice thing," Bedelia says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone for reading! I am completely overwhelmed by the feedback and wonderful comments I've gotten so far, and I appreciate every one of you! 
> 
> So far I've kept to an every-Friday posting schedule, but there are still some parts of chapter 4 that I'm working on... so fingers crossed for next Friday, but it may be a little bit later.


	4. Chapter 4

"We're missing something," Will says, standing over the Ripper's latest three bodies. This sounder was quick -- one, two, three, right in a row. The BAU barely had time to start investigating the first when the second body was found, and then the third. 

Beverly makes a sound of agreement. "Something's got the Ripper agitated, that's for sure."

Will shakes his head. "This doesn't _feel_ agitated."

"Is he done?" Zeller, standing next to Price, gestures at the cold storage. "Because we can only fit so many bodies here, and if he starts a third sounder... we're gonna need a bigger boat."

There are a few bodies from other killers taking up space, though obviously Jack would ship them all off to long-term storage in favor of the Ripper. 

Will rubs his temples, shakes his head. "I don't know."

"Maybe he's excited?" Price, this time.

"Excited?" Beverly asks.

"You know, the blush of first love. We've all gone through a honeymoon phase like that," Price says, glancing at Zeller.

Zeller scoffs. "Honeymooning with who?" 

"Will, _obviously,_ " Beverly says. At Will's glare, she shrugs. "What? You know everyone is thinking it."

"I'm not honeymooning with the Chesapeake Ripper."

"Nobody said that you were," Zeller says. "Feelings can be unrequited." This time, Zeller mock-glares at Price, who makes a pissy face in return. 

"The Chesapeake Ripper isn't honeymooning with me, either."

"You sure about that?" Beverly asks. She's only half-joking.

"The first body was heart and lungs," Will says, changing the subject. "The second was just the intestines?"

"Just the intestines," Zeller confirms.

"And the third body was the brain and kidneys." Will sighs and rubs his eyes. "What is he doing with these organs?"

That's the question that's been haunting Will since the first Chesapeake Ripper case file he read. _Surgical trophies._ If he never sees or hears those words again, it'll still be too soon. That description is so clinical, when the Ripper is anything but. _Surgical trophies._ Like the Ripper wants to cherish and relive his crimes. The time, space, effort, and energy that goes into not only harvesting the organs, but _keeping_ them, is the key to catching the Ripper -- Will knows it, Jack knows it. There's something _there,_ lurking between the lines. No answer they've been able to come up with fits with any profile they've written up, and vice versa. 

"I always just assumed he has a cabin in the woods filled with organs in jars," Zeller says with a shrug, "Garrett Jacob Hobbs style."

"But creepier," Beverly says.

"Intestines, though?" Price says. "Who the hell takes _intestines_ as a surgical trophy?"

"Maybe the Ripper is making sausage," Zeller says.

Will freezes. 

"You don't think he's selling them, do you?" Beverly asks.

"What, like on the black market," Zeller says, making a face.

"It's the one thing that we haven't considered," Beverly counters, "and it would be clever."

"An organ harvester..." Price says slowly, "disguising himself as a serial killer. Interesting. Unlikely, but interesting."

The conversation about organ theft continues, but Will isn't listening anymore. 

_Garrett Jacob Hobbs style._

Hobbs was a cannibal. 

_Maybe the Ripper is making sausage._

The answer, unfurling before Will, is so achingly obvious: the Ripper isn't keeping them -- he's _eating_ them. 

Will gets one moment. One pure, jubilant, _satisfying_ moment of clarity, before the rest of the profile unravels in his mind like a train wreck.

Sausage. 

A surgeon with the skills of a chef. 

A doctor, with a fixation on Will. 

_I won't tell the Chesapeake Ripper if you won't._

Hannibal, there, in the dark. Hannibal, with a crown of antlers. 

(Some part of Will already knew. Some part of Will had always known.)

"Will?" Will's eyes snap to Beverly, who's looking at him with concern. "You okay?"

He nods, distant, a million miles away. "Just thinking."

"You don't really think he's an organ harvester, do you? Because I was mostly joking."

Somewhere very far away, Will's body shrugs and his face makes an indecisive expression. "Could be," Will's mouth says. "It's worth investigating."

"You don't look so hot."

Will's hand comes to rub at his clammy forehead. 

"Been fighting off a cold, I think. Haven't been sleeping much."

"Might as well go home and get some rest," Zeller says. "These guys aren't going anywhere."

Will nods, makes his excuses, and stumbles out of Quantico. 

__________

First, Will is devastated. 

Then disgusted. 

Then _furious._

But not at Hannibal. 

__________

Will storms into Bedelia’s office in a red haze, blowing past the pretty, bored receptionist, who tries to call after him. She knows better than to _follow_ him, though. 

They probably have protocols for when things like this happen. For when _patients like him_ happen.

Will throws the door to Bedelia’s office open and finds the good doctor at her desk, pen in hand -- the perfect picture of scholarly academia. She even has a leather-bound journal open in front of her, completing the picture. The tableau is a perfect negative to Will’s undoubtedly wild hair and wild eyes. The dull thud of the door slamming into the wall rings distantly over the roar of blood pounding in Will’s ears. 

All at once the office is filled with ice -- the walls, the floors, the furniture, everything cold and unforgiving. And Dr. Du Maurier in the middle of it all, eyes only mildly curious, looking at Will like a mild inconvenience instead of a potentially dangerous patient. 

Will wants to see her _flinch._ Or jump in her chair -- something, _anything_ to show that she is frightened of him, of the state that he’s in. He aches for any reaction other than calm indifference.

She leaves him disappointed in that, too. 

Instead, Bedelia’s eyes flick dispassionately over his sweaty face, his hair in disarray. Then, she places her pen on the desk and closes her journal, pushing it to the side.

“Tabitha?” she calls. 

Rustling, then quick footsteps. “I’m so sorry Dr. Du Maurier, he just came in and -”

“Please cancel my next appointment.” Tabitha nods, looks askance at Will, and scurries away. Clearly, she’s not enacting any kind of dangerous-patient protocol. “Mr. Graham, please, sit.”

Will does not sit. Instead, he gropes blindly for the door handle, unwilling to take his eyes off his target. When he finds it, he slams the door closed as violently as he opened it. 

“Did you know?” he demands, hands curled into shaking fists at his sides. 

Bedelia turns her chair, ever-so-slightly, to face him. 

“Did I know what, Mr. Graham?”

“Did you know,” Will says, looking directly into her eyes, allowing himself to fall into her for the first time, “that Hannibal is a serial killer?”

She doesn't blink. She doesn't flinch, doesn't frown, doesn't go wide-eyed with shock or gasp in surprise. Instead she stares, impassive as ever, that damned frozen lake that Will can slam with a pickaxe but never seems to crack. 

"I didn't know," she says, impassive. "But I didn't _not_ know, either."

" _What,_ " Will says through gritted teeth, "is that supposed to mean."

"Sit down, Mr. Graham."

Will stays standing.

Finally, Bedelia lets out a small sigh, like Will is a particularly unruly child.

"Hannibal is unlike anyone I have ever met. Singular," she says, "but you know that. You wouldn't get along with him so well otherwise."

" _Why?_ " The word bursts out of him, beyond his control. He wants to listen to what Bedelia has to say, for herself and for Hannibal, but he can't. 

He can't.

"Why what, Mr. Graham?"

Will wants to take the fancy vase off of her desk and throw it at her face. Wants to split her open -- peel back her face and see if there’s anything human under that dispassionate mask. He wants to see her _bleed._

"Why him. You -" he shakes his head incredulously. "You _set me up._ With _that._ You said that my perfect man -"

"I never said anything about your 'perfect man,' Mr. Graham. If you recall, you postulated that even I didn't know of anyone who would love you for who you are. I said that I did. Anything that you inferred from that was your doing, not my suggestion. You fixated. Against my better judgement, I may add."

She's right, and it takes the wind out of Will's sails.

"I told you that you shouldn't meet him. I discouraged it, if you recall."

"Oh yeah, sure. But you didn't think to mention 'because he's the Chesapeake Ripper,' instead of just saying no?"

This time, Will gets a blink. No shock registers on her face, but he knows that she didn't know that, not precisely.

"Doctor patient privilege, Mr. Graham."

Will laughs humorlessly. 

"So does he talk to you about it?" She says nothing, so he clarifies: "about his _hobby._ "

"No."

"But you knew anyway."

"Sit down, Mr. Graham."

Will drops into the chair opposite her.

"Hannibal and I don't talk about anything quite so... directly. He had been my patient for several months before I realized that he is," she says, " _different._ That he wears what I refer to as a person-suit, rather than inhabiting it, like you or I."

Bedelia's eyes are as flat and as empty as a shark's, and Will has a hard time believing that she doesn't 'wear' one similar to Hannibal's. Can't help but wonder why he gets along so well with monsters.

"Sure," he says. He agrees because he wants her to keep talking, but she cocks her head and looks him up and down. "So what, he comes to you for advice on how to pass as human?"

"Nothing quite so direct, no. What Hannibal needs is for me to be a sounding board, one that he can consult without judgement. His emotions are..." she pauses, teasing for the correct word, "...not necessarily in-sync with your average person's."

"That's because he's a psychopath," Will mutters.

"...And while he is very adept at mimicry, and at understanding other people, on occasion he slips up. There is a gap, so to speak, in his person-suit. One that someone could get a glimpse through, if they're very focused."

"And you help him hide the monster that lies underneath."

"I help all of my patients navigate the world, Mr. Graham. Hannibal is not special in that regard."

Will closes his eyes and counts to ten, then backwards down to one. When he feels calm enough, he asks, with careful enunciation on each word:

"Why did you mention him to me? At all? You could have said nothing, when I asked, or you could have said yes but refused any detail. You could have refused to tell me anything _more_ ," he holds up a hand to forestall her interruption, "and I _would_ have left it alone, eventually. You know that I would have. But you didn't."

"I care about the well-being of my patients."

"I'm not exactly feeling _well_ ," Will says acidly.

"How have you been sleeping, Mr. Graham? Before today."

"Fine," he bites out.

"Your nightmares?" She already knows the answer.

"Few and far between."

"And your overall anxiety levels?"

"Low."

"And why is that, Mr. Graham?" Will refuses to answer. "Could it be because you are in a secure, committed relationship with someone who both loves and understands you, and who can offer the emotional support you have so desperately needed?"

Will can't help but laugh and shake his head. 

" _Can_ Hannibal love me? Can he love _anyone._ "

"You know that he can."

Will just shakes his head.

"Hannibal is like anyone else. He wants to be seen. To be understood. And to be loved, not despite who he is, but because of it."

"And so you… what? Sent him the one person who could _see_ him? And you didn't worry about the fact that I work for the FBI and that he'll spend the rest of his life in _prison_ because of it?"

If she had wanted Hannibal arrested she could have tipped off the police herself. She hasn't, so clearly she doesn't.

"Have you said anything to Jack Crawford?" 

Will says nothing. 

"No, you haven't. You came here instead, because you want me to talk you out of it."

"No I _don't._ "

Bedelia uncrosses and re-crosses her legs in the other direction while the silence stretches out between them. 

"Why are you here, Mr. Graham?"

"Because I'm angry."

"With me?" Silence. "With Hannibal?" Silence. "Or with yourself?"

Will keeps his eyes fixated on her delicate gold necklace and says nothing.

"What good will sending Hannibal to prison do for you?"

Will laughs, incredulous. 

"You're joking, right? You must have read a newspaper once or twice in your life."

Will's words are unnecessarily cruel, but Bedelia doesn't react.

"I'm not asking about the world, Mr. Graham. I am asking about you."

"I'm not worried about my reputation." 

When word gets out, who Hannibal really is, and how he is connected so intimately to the case... things will be rough, for a while. People will alternate between being proud of Will for realizing, and ask how he could have not seen it sooner. How Hannibal could have been right before the FBI's nose, all this time. Undetected.

They'll ask what kind of profiler is Will, if he can't even see the man in his own bed?

"That's not what I'm asking you. I'm not worried about the world, and I care only about your reputation inasmuch as it affects your mental health and well-being. I am asking about you, my patient, and about how you see your personal life changing in the wake of this realization. Will you go back to your sleepless nights? To allowing Jack to order you around all hours of the day and night, with no regard to your mental health? How will _you_ suffer, if there is a fundamental change in the way that you live your life currently?"

Will flicks his eyes up to hers, truly surprised for the first time since setting foot in her office. 

The icy lake looks back, blue and fathomless. She hasn't had a single emotional reaction to anything Will has said, and yet her eyes are open, unguarded, _guileless._ The ice doesn't crack but -- for the first time, Will can see fish swimming beneath the frozen water. For a split second, Will understands her: Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier is a psychiatrist who places importance on the lives of her patients, and her patients alone. Just like how psychopaths often make great surgeons, because they care only about their own record, and about the survival of their patients as a reflection of their own skills. They maintain a purity of focus that is out of reach for people with normal, human empathy. They live undistracted by the tears of loved ones or the terror their patients feel, and they channel that singular focus into being the most adept among their peers. 

Dr. Du Maurier is quite the same. She is asking about the effect the revelation will have on Will's own life, because to her, that's the only important detail. She doesn't care about society or the good of the world. Only the microcosm between these four walls. For the first time, Will can see himself through her eyes: a patient in dire need of help, about to make a terrible decision and destroy his own life. 

Bedelia blinks and the fish scatter away, leaving Will to wonder if he truly saw them at all.

"Mr. Graham?" she prompts.

"I...." Will runs a hand over his face, presses his fingertips into his eyelids until his vision goes cloudy. "I don't know."

"Do you believe your life will be better?"

"I don't know."

"You cannot come to an informed decision if you lie to yourself."

"My life will be worse," Will admits. "I... I'll be lonely. And..." he allows his eyes to close again, unsure of when he opened them, but the pendulum doesn't swing -- his 'gift' doesn't work for events that haven't happened yet.

Truthfully, he doesn't need to. If Hannibal goes to prison Will's entire life will fall apart, piece by piece, and he'll never be able to gather them back together by their razor-sharp edges. 

"And what will happen if you do nothing?"

That, at least, has an easy answer.

"Hannibal will keep hunting."

"And?"

Will's eyes blink open. "And?"

"Will you be able to sleep at night, knowing what you know?"

"I don't know."

"You need to answer that question, Mr. Graham, before you can make an informed decision. Think on it. Take a sick day, or two."

__________

Will thinks about it.

He thinks about it while pacing a hole in his hardwood floor, his dogs looking on, confused by his erratic behavior.

He calls Jack and tells him that he has the flu. 

He tears the cuticle of his thumb to shreds trying to decide what to tell Hannibal. He can’t use the flu excuse because Hannibal will come with soup to play nursemaid, which he obviously has to avoid. 

He can’t eat anything that Hannibal cooks for him.

He could tell Hannibal that he’s out of town on a case. But what if Hannibal comes by the house while he’s ‘gone’ and sees Will’s car, the lights in the house?

Would Hannibal come by his house?

Has he ever?

What would Will even do if he _had?_ For all Will knows, Hannibal comes by every time Will’s gone on a trip to snoop and try to endear himself to Will’s dogs. 

What would Hannibal do if he came by Will’s supposed-to-be-empty house and found Will here?

What would _Will_ do?

The answer, when it comes to Will, is both easy and obvious. He picks up the phone, even though he doesn’t want to hear Hannibal’s voice, doesn’t want to leave any part of himself vulnerable to the man, the _monster._

The phone rings once, twice. 

“Hello Will.”

“Hey Hannibal.” The sounds of Hannibal’s voice melts him, just a little. For a second -- one hysterical second -- Will thinks that he has it wrong, that it can’t be _Hannibal_. 

_I didn’t know, but I didn’t not know, either._

“Listen,” Will says, allowing some of his exhaustion and frustration to creep into his voice, “I wanted to call and let you know that there’s been another Chesapeake Ripper killing.”

“I read about that in the paper,” Hannibal says, sounding the perfect combination of curious and regretful. 

“Yeah, well, Jack’s on the warpath. If he had his way I would sleep at headquarters until the Ripper is caught. I’m probably going to be working for every hour that I’m not sleeping for the next few days.”

“I take it this means you're canceling dinner for tomorrow night?”

Hannibal doesn’t sound suspicious. In fact, he sounds like he was expecting this phone call. 

(It probably helps that Will has canceled their plans after every Ripper murder, now that he thinks about it.)

“I give it three, maybe four days of Jack riding us all into exhaustion before someone puts their foot down.”

“You could use this as an exercise in enforcing your boundaries.”

 _I am,_ Will thinks. 

“Not today,” Will says, “not with Jack. You know how he gets about catching the Ripper. This is the third in his sounder, so it might be our last chance to catch him before he disappears again.”

“Then I wish you happy hunting, and ask only that you keep yourself fed and watered in my stead.”

Will takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, counting backward from ten. 

“Thanks, Hannibal.”

__________

Will thinks. 

On the one hand, he thinks about Hannibal. Thinks about the time they spend together, thinks about his no-longer-empty home, thinks about meals and fires and love. 

On the other, Will thinks about the world. About the Ripper, about Jack, about the innocent people that have lost their lives to the Ripper. Who will, still. People who haven’t died yet, but who have been marked as future victims. 

Will tries, really, truly _tries_ to care about those people. An ordinary person should. People are supposed to _care_ about people. 

(But Will has never exactly been “people” before, has he? He’s never connected with “people,” has never slotted comfortably into the loud, incomprehensible world that he had no choice but to be born into. The only time Will has felt at home in his own skin has been with Hannibal at his side, Hannibal’s hand on his back, Hannibal’s voice in his ear. 

Hannibal, Hannibal, Hannibal.

Does Will _care?_ Does he really, _truly_ care? Everyone dies, eventually, anyway. 

Will tries to imagine a world with Hannibal in prison. 

Tries, then, to imagine a world in which people die and Will does nothing to stop it. 

The latter is mildly uncomfortable; the former, unbearable.)

Will sits, head in his hands, surrounded by his worried dogs. Will sits, awareness coming back to his body in fits and starts, bits and pieces, little by little. His hands, clenched in his hair. His legs, tensed and ready to run. 

His curved spine, his clenched jaw, his aching fists. 

Will blinks his eyes open. 

Will knows. 

__________

Will stands on Hannibal's front stoop for a long time. 

_Out of the frying pan and into the fire._

Will isn't ready to live without Hannibal -- which means he has to figure out how to live _with_ Hannibal. 

It's a beautiful evening. The setting sun bathes the street in a golden glow, and the crisp late-autumn breeze rustles through the last clinging leaves. The neighborhood around Will is bustling, yet overlain with a dampening quietness -- expensive cars purr by with their nearly-noiseless engines, respectable parents usher their strictly-well-behaved children to ballet practice and cello lessons -- all around Will are the comings and goings of neatly respectable people. 

This silence screams _rich._ In the middle of huge cities like Baltimore, only fantastically wealthy neighborhoods can afford to be so quiet. So insular. And it's not that Will has never noticed it before, but…

But it's never really been worth the mention, before. People think that places like this are safe, even in dangerous cities. These streets are patrolled far more regularly, and more diligently, than other, poorer neighborhoods. Break-ins here will summon a police presence that actually _cares._ These people might as well live in a different city than their more unfortunate counterparts. They might as well live in another _country,_ another _world._ Everyone knows everyone here -- Hannibal knows each of his neighbors by name, knows what they do for a living, how many children they have, what they do for fun.

Surely, these people know the same about Hannibal.

Or, they _think_ they know the same about Hannibal. 

A sleek black Tesla cuts noiselessly down the street, pulling into a driveway four houses down. 

What would these people think, if they _knew?_ Does living in a place like this make Hannibal's hobbies easier, or harder? More cops, more attention from the neighbors -- but less suspicion. And Hannibal couldn't live in different circumstances. Not for a long period of time, at least. He's far too much of a hedonist to give up the trappings of his elegant lifestyle for long. 

Will shifts his weight from one foot to the other. Hannibal's door is massive and wooden and as intimidating as it was the first time Will came here. The house is old -- filled with history, stained with blood. 

Probably haunted, to the people who believe in that sort of thing.

(Will doesn't believe in that sort of thing, not really, but the bayou-mysticism of New Orleans is a worldview that's baked into his bones.)

Will takes a deep breath, holds it, counts to ten, and releases it in a gust of breath that feels indulgently noisy. 

Hannibal won't know what Will knows. He's a psychiatrist, not a mind-reader, and Will has absolutely no reason to think that Bedelia would betray his confidence. In fact, for as much as she seems to care about Hannibal as a patient, maybe even as a friend, Will is almost certain that she has said nothing to him about Will's discovery. To do so would expose her to questions about how Will came into Hannibal's life in the first place -- questions that Bedelia would very much prefer to avoid answering. 

Particularly if things were to go sour with Will. 

Bedelia can be trusted to prioritize her own self-preservation. The only question is whether or not Hannibal found Will's isolation unusual, or if Will will be able to act normally. If Will will unwittingly give himself away. But then again, Will has always been a good liar. People see him as fragile, as honest. That perception makes Will's occasional forays into deception or manipulation embarrassingly easy, even among people trained to notice that sort of thing.

Will can only stall for so long before it gets weird. Noticeable, to the neighbors. Suspicious, to Hannibal. 

Knocking on the door bangs like a judge's gavel. 

Silence rings. Will has nowhere to hide, now. No distractions, no more stalling. 

The door opens, and there's Hannibal -- smile sincere, crow's feet crinkled. Will half expected to come face-to-face with the wendigo but it's just -- Hannibal. 

"Will," Hannibal says, fondness lacing his tone. He steps aside, beckoning Will into the open doorway, and Will finds it far easier than expected to follow his direction. "I must confess, while I would never presume to claim your time as my own, I have missed you more than I expected in your absence." Hannibal closes the door behind them with a definitive _snick._ They're in here together, now. 

Hannibal cups Will's elbow, pulls him close. "You look exhausted," he murmurs, running a hand over Will's hair.

"I haven't been sleeping well."

The hand on Will's elbow slides down his forearm and curls around Will's hand, thumb soothing over his knuckles. "Come." Hannibal tugs lightly, towards the stairs, and _that_ was not part of Will's prepared script. 

Will follows for lack of any better options.

Hannibal draws him upstairs and into the master bedroom, kicking Will's heart rate into overdrive. They've never done this before. Hannibal has never brought him straight to his bedroom, and any deviation from the normal, from _before,_ could not be _less welcome._

_Maybe,_ Will thinks, _he wants me to take a nap before dinner._

"Undress." 

Will blinks. Hannibal doesn't follow up his order with any explanation, just turns and walks into the en-suite bathroom. 

Hands shaking, Will begins unbuttoning his shirt. A cabinet hinge creaks open in the bathroom, closes. Will folds his shirt and sets it on the dresser. He unbuckles his belt, coils it, and sets it down next to his shirt. He steps out of his shoes, all the while straining to hear any other noises from the bathroom, but whatever Hannibal's doing, he's quiet. Will unbuttons his pants while taking a mental inventory of anything potentially dangerous that Hannibal could keep in the bathroom, but comes up blank. There's no telling what Hannibal could have done in Will's absence, anyway. Will steps out of each pant leg, picks up the garment, and folds while listening, but there's nothing to hear. 

Silence.

Ominous silence. 

A hand presses into the middle of Will's back and he jumps half a foot in the air. 

_"Jesus Christ!"_

There's Hannibal, standing behind him, having moved utterly silently through the room. 

Hannibal looks over Will, concerned. 

"Are you all right?"

Will swallows. "Yeah. You just startled the hell out of me."

"You seemed lost in thought."

Will swallows again and buys a few seconds by putting his pants on the dresser with his other clothing. 

"I didn't hear you," he says, "and I've been a little... jumpy."

"Quite understandable, given where your mind has been these past few days."

Hannibal knows he's been hunting monsters, just not _which_ specific, personal monsters. Who. 

Hannibal walks over to the bed and turns down the covers, like he really _is_ planning for Will to take a nap, and Will trails after him, feeling ridiculous in nothing but his boxers and socks. Hands come to Will's waist and remove his underwear. Hannibal kneels at Will's feet and removes one of Will's socks, then the other, and pushes them and the discarded underwear out of the way.

Completely nude, Will stands before Hannibal, fully dressed.

"Lie down," Hannibal says, "on your stomach."

Will lies down. If Hannibal plans on killing him, this is an awfully strange way to go about it. If Hannibal plans on fucking him, well. It's nothing they haven't done before, right? The click of a bottle opening seems louder than Will has ever heard it. One of Hannibal's knees comes onto the bed, and then strong hands sweep down Will's shoulders, slick, scented with lavender and cedar.

Will sinks bonelessly into the mattress. Sherlock Holmes, he is _not._

"You're hyper-vigilant," Hannibal says, "and that tension from your mind finds its way into your body." Hannibal's fingers dig into Will's shoulder blades. "I understand that you have a job to do, and that you're trying to catch a killer, but you must take better care of yourself in the meanwhile. When was the last time you slept?"

Will groans into the pillow. 

"I slept last night," he says, half-muffled and slightly petulant.

"How many hours?" Hannibal finds a knot in Will's shoulder -- not hard to do, since Will's pretty sure his back is made up entirely of knots at this point -- and kneads at it relentlessly. It hurts, but it's the good kind of hurt. The necessary kind of hurt. The kind of hurt that's really a release, that will feel better, after.

"A couple."

There's no point in lying to Hannibal.

"And the night before?"

Will mashes his face into the pillow and says nothing. Easier, too, to allow Hannibal to attribute Will's jumpiness and tension to his case than to anything more dangerous. 

Hannibal works methodically down Will's back -- like everything else he does, he may as well be a professional masseur, his touch hovering somewhere between clinical and sensual. While Will has never actually gone to a massage parlor, he imagines that they usually don't work quite like this -- fingers trailing softly over Will's back, making him shiver, or a possessive hand over his ass. Hannibal doesn’t take it any farther, though. He doesn’t try to arouse, or pay too much attention to Will’s cheeks, other than to massage them with the same diligence given to his back. Instead, Hannibal massages down one leg, then the other, and circles back up to Will’s shoulders, arms, _hands._

Will is a puddle, by the end. 

Soft. Weak.

Will’s eyes are closed, but he feels Hannibal get off the bed. Footsteps pad to the end of the bed, followed by the swishing of cloth, and then Hannibal returns. He scritches his fingernails across Will’s scalp -- cleaned of oil, which means he must have been getting a towel. This is probably Will’s cue to get up, but that seems impossible.

The soft terry cloth sweeps down Will’s back, arms, legs, cleaning him of excess oil. 

“Dinner won’t be for a while yet,” Hannibal says, covering Will’s body with the comforter. “Sleep.”

  
  


Will sleeps.

  
  


Will wakes on his own. Half-expecting Hannibal to be lurking in a corner, he pries an eye open to find an empty room. He can’t have been asleep for long, but it was deep. Enough to leave him better-rested but half-groggy, a reminder to his body and to his brain about how much of a deficit he managed to work up in the past days. 

Weeks. Months. 

(The truth is that Will always sleeps better in Hannibal’s bed. Even now. Maybe it's because he's always known -- maybe it's because some part of his mind recognized Hannibal for what he really is in that very first meeting, and decided that there's no need to fear monsters when in a monster's bed. 

Maybe, too, Will's fear -- his truest, deepest fear -- is that he is in the middle of his becoming, that with every monster he meets he loses another part of his humanity, and that the only way his work for Jack can end is with him becoming a monster himself. And maybe that fear -- that truest, deepest fear -- ceases to be the unknown in the Chesapeake Ripper’s bed. He's already here, he's already become, and so there's no if's or maybe's to worry about. 

Maybe Will is a butterfly peeling out of his cocoon in the dark of Hannibal’s bedroom, stretching his wings and allowing himself to exist without fear. Maybe this is the only place where Will can be himself, his whole, unconscious self, without trying so desperately to be somebody else. 

Maybe Hannibal is remaking Will in his image. 

Maybe this is who Will always was.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.)

Now Will faces down the barrel of eating at Hannibal’s table.

Knowingly. Willingly.

The fact that he's done it dozens of times before doesn't make it any easier. Knowing that the food will be delicious, exquisitely cooked and masterfully disguised as pork or beef, still doesn't help. 

But he can do it. He can do it because the alternative is -- unthinkable. 

Will gets out of bed. Part of him wants to meet Hannibal downstairs just like this -- nude, stripped bare and honest, wings unfurled from his shoulder blades -- but he also knows that he can't. It's too soon. Will himself still stands on uneven footing, and Hannibal may not be willing to take that kind of risk. Hannibal has much more to lose that Will does. And so Will walks back over to the dresser. His underwear and socks have been helpfully gathered and folded, waiting for Will at the top of the stack. He gets dressed, hands shaking, skin still lightly tacky with oil. He wraps himself back into his cocoon, silk thread over silk thread, until he's human again.

The bedroom door stands open. 

Waiting. 

Will descends the stairs one step at a time. Whatever Hannibal is cooking smells familiar, smells like coming home. _Home._ What a nebulous, idealized concept, fraught with oceans of baggage. Will doesn't have a home. He has a house filled with dogs, and a string of dingy duplexes, apartments, and basement units scattered lovelessly throughout his past. Wolf Trap is the first time he's put down roots worth tending, and even then, it's just four walls and a roof. 

Will is halfway across the parlor when Hannibal materializes into view in the kitchen hallway. 

"Perfect timing," Hannibal says. "I was just coming to wake you." 

Will lingers at the entry to the dining room. They stand as mirrors: Will, haunting the doorway from the parlor, and Hannibal, paused at the threshold of the hallway from the kitchen. Between them, Hannibal’s id laid bare: the sumptuously decorated table, vertical herb garden, and roaring fire, with Leda and the Swan looking on. This is the space where Hannibal entertains himself by 'entertaining' others. This is where Will becomes. 

"Please, sit down," Hannibal says, "I'll have dinner out in a moment." He gestures to the head of the table, where two glasses of wine wait. 

Will nods and walks, dreamlike, to his place. Across from Hannibal. Back to the fire, to Leda. It doesn't seem right to sit down across from no one, so he waits. Standing. Fingertips of his right hand resting on the table. Hannibal will return with dinner. He will sit across the table from Will, warm and soft and deceptively human. And Will will have to pretend that that's all he is. 

For one breathless, weightless moment, Will finds himself far away from Baltimore -- in the river by his house, casting a line into slowly-churning waters. Life is simpler, there. Decisions, easier. The fly catches in the breeze, arcing high overhead --

"Will?"

Will blinks. Hannibal stands in front of him, concern etched into his features. On the table, there's --

There's --

Will blinks again. Two plates, each adorned with red beans and rice, trout, and some shaved vegetable artfully arranged in typical Hannibal fashion. Will has never seen Hannibal present something so simple, so classically ordinary. The dish is beautiful -- of course it's beautiful -- but it's inarguably simple. 

The dish comes straight out of Will's childhood. 

Hannibal knows that, because Will told him as much.

"Are you all right?"

Will came down here ready. Ready to eat at Hannibal’s table, ready to make that decision, regardless of what it means to his life, to his soul. And now --

Now -- 

Hannibal reaches for Will, tugs him close, threads a hand into Will’s hair and tucks Will’s face against his shoulder. 

Will realizes, distantly, that he’s shaking. Hannibal, though -- Hannibal is a rock, solid and sure. A safe harbor. Will feels like a kite, battered in the unforgiving storm, tethered down to earth by nothing but Hannibal’s strong embrace. 

As Will tucks his face against Hannibal's throat, trembling, he realizes. 

He _realizes._

Hannibal is manipulating him. The hand carding through Will's curls, Will's favorite meal on the table -- all of it. Hannibal doesn't know what Will knows, but --

But Hannibal _knows_ that Will is exhausted, that Jack has been running Will ragged, that Will has been spending his days in the mind of a killer. Hannibal knows what kind of horrors Will has been decoding, analyzing, understanding. Hannibal knows that he _put them there._ Hannibal left Will to drown in the ocean of his own mind's creations, only to show up with a life-preserver and a sympathetic ear. And this is what Will has been given, in return -- Hannibal's embrace and a cozy fire and a perfectly cooked meal. Comfort -- home -- love. A place for Will to escape the dark, and the cold. 

Hannibal did this because he _wants_ to be the one that Will turns to. He wants to see Will suffer, and he wants to be the one to end Will's suffering. Hannibal wants the spicy smell of his cologne and the crackling fire to be associated with safety. With home. With love. 

The worst part is that it's _working._

Hannibal couldn't have known how close Will is to the breaking point -- couldn't have, or Will probably wouldn't still be alive right now -- but -- 

But -- 

Will takes a shuddering breath, and the fingertips soothing his scalp come down to grip at the back of his neck. Grounding. Strong. 

"Sorry," Will says, reflexive. The word comes out soft and muffled, but Hannibal squeezes his neck in response. 

"You have nothing to apologize for."

Will takes a deep breath and feels -- 

Lulled. Handled. Cared for. 

Before coming to Hannibal's house, Will had thought that he was ready to dine at Hannibal's table. He wouldn't have come if he wasn't ready, wouldn't have taken that kind of risk. But the fact that he doesn't have to -- not in the way that matters -- is a relief stronger than anything Will has ever encountered. He's a marionette, giving in to the utter relaxation of letting someone else pull his strings. 

Will doesn't need to make any more choices tonight.

"We can stay here for as long as you need," Hannibal says. 

Gentle. Kind. 

"I'm okay," Will says, and he's surprised to find that he mostly means it. He lifts his head and pulls far enough away to look at Hannibal properly. Hannibal's face is arranged in a suitably sympathetic expression, but Will can feel his dark curl of satisfaction.

_I take my partner and I shatter him into pieces, so that I can rebuild him in my image. This is my design._

Will doesn't yet know how he's going to save his sense of self in the face of Hannibal's machinations -- but he's ready to find out.

"Shall we?" Will says, tilting his head towards the table. 

Hannibal holds him close for one more moment, then releases the arm around his waist.

  
  


Will eats dinner, savoring the flaky fish, the rich beans. 

Watching Hannibal. Watching Hannibal watch him in return. 

Crunching down on a crisp stalk of asparagus, Will thinks, _I could live like this._

  
  


Hannibal takes Will to bed. Undresses him, like a doll, and tucks him under the covers with a soothing hand rubbing down his back. 

In the morning, Will wakes with an erection. Hannibal’s chest rises and falls under Will’s cheek -- Will’s body doesn’t seem to care what Hannibal does for a hobby -- and the tempo is too even, too shallow, for Hannibal to be asleep. 

Hannibal rolls Will onto his back. Takes him apart, with his mouth, and with his hands. 

In the morning, Hannibal brings Will downstairs and deposits him -- gently, oh so gently -- in the chair overlooking the kitchen. He makes coffee in his french press, cooks eggs, and then ushers Will to the dining room table. 

"Protein scramble," Hannibal says, perhaps the least descriptive announcement Will has ever received for a dish. The eggs are light and fluffy, dotted with chunks of peppers, onions, and _meat._ Or, as Hannibal called it, _protein._

Will eats it without pause.

Everything looks simpler, in the morning. 

__________

Will goes back to work, the first day of the rest of his life. The halls of Quantico look different, now. Sinister. For as much as Will occasionally over-identified with a killer, for as much as Will sometimes worries about _becoming_ a killer, he's never quite viewed the FBI headquarters through the eyes of a criminal before. Because he is, now, a criminal, in his own way. He knows the identity of the Chesapeake Ripper and he'll be _hiding_ that. Working those cases and pretending to care, pretending to pursue the common goal of bringing a murderer to justice, while instead obfuscating the truth. 

Depending on how far Will is willing to go, he could potentially go to jail for this.

Will's footsteps echo down the linoleum hallways, bouncing off of glass and harsh concrete corners. It's early, yet. While Quantico never truly sleeps, there are far fewer people here to see the watery early-morning light filtering in through the one-way windows. To see the eerie shadows of leaves, of birds. To see the twisted, elongated shadow of Will's own body, moving steadily through the building. One step after another. 

Will is alone. 

Will is utterly, _utterly_ alone. 

His feet trace a familiar path. Through the atrium, past the commissary, up the stairs and to the left. Past Jack's office. One step after another, after another, after another. 

The sound of Will's footsteps get louder, and louder still, until he can't help but wonder why no one is sticking a head out of their office to tell him to quit making a racket. 

_Where is everyone?_

It's early, yet. 

The shadow of antlers, on the wall. 

_Oh._

It's not footsteps that Will has been hearing, but hoof beats. Will isn't alone after all. 

After walking for miles down the lonely hallway, Will comes to _the room._ Jack's war room, where he keeps the Chesapeake Ripper files, crime scene photos tacked up on cork boards, color-coded maps and strings connecting tack to tack. 

But that room doesn't seem to be there, anymore. Instead, in its place: an operating theater, modern and decked out in grandiose splendor. A body, splayed out, pinned down to an incongruous antique wooden desk in the center of the room, like a mounted butterfly. 

(Will doesn't look at the body.)

"There you are," the wendigo says in Hannibal's voice. 

__________

Will wakes in the dark. 

An arm curls over his waist, pulling him back into a warm chest.

"Bad dreams?"

Will shakes his head and runs his fingertips over the hand that's come to settle on his waist. 

"Just strange dreams," he says. "Go back to sleep."

__________

Will goes back to work, the first day of the rest of his life. 

"You look better," Zeller says, when they run into each other in the hall outside of the Ripper's _war room,_ as Jack calls it. "Last time I saw you you looked like you were about five seconds from puking your guts out."

"Yeah," Will says absently, "my immune system has been pretty shot this year."

Zeller nods. "Gotta make sure you're getting your vitamin C, man. Cold and flu season is no joke."

Will nods. He considers adding some kind of comment about needing to drink more orange juice or take Emergen-C or something, but that seems too much like overselling and oversharing, so he doesn't. 

"Jack upset?" he asks instead.

Zeller snorts. "When is he not? I haven't seen him yet this morning, so if you wanna get in there," he jerks a thumb at the room behind him, "without him breathing down your neck, now's your time."

"Duty calls," Will agrees with a grimace, eyes sliding past Zeller and onto the gory photos visible through the glass walls. "Any breakthroughs while I was gone?"

"'Course not," Zeller says, slapping him on the shoulder. "That's what we have you for, right? I'll be downstairs if you need me," he says, and then he set off towards the morgue. 

Leaving Will alone. 

It's strange to be back, even though Will wasn't gone for more than a few days. This room, where Will has spent dozens upon dozens of hours, is utterly the same and utterly different. One one wall, the Ripper's first two sounders, two years old. On the opposite wall, his current sounders. Twelve victims in total spanning across three years. 

Will sits on the edge of the desk and stares at the recent-kills wall through fresh eyes. The first kill -- the insurance salesman -- that one seems rote. Planned. Hannibal had probably chosen this victim -- this presentation -- well in advance, and acted quickly without coming up with something new. The second kill, an introduction. A hello, a hat tip to Will. 

(Will had known better than to be afraid, even then.)

Will's eyes drift over to the third kill -- the crime scene photo pinned side-by-side with Botticelli's _Fortitude_ \-- and the meaning snaps together all at once, painfully obvious and dangerously bold. _Fortitude_ was notable only because it was Botticelli's _first_ painting. The _first._ Not the first time he had ever touched brush to canvas, but his first work as a Renaissance artist, the first named, the first _known._ So chosen because the Chesapeake Ripper's first kill -- first named, first _known_ \-- was Botticelli, too. 

Someone was arrested for the Botticelli-inspired murders in Italy, but whoever it was, was wrongly accused. 

Hannibal wanted Will to see his crimes in Italy. Wanted Will to see his becoming, wanted Will to _understand._ Those murders in Italy were almost certainly not the first time Hannibal ever touched scalpel to flesh, either, but they were his first that he wanted attributed to a name, to a _modus operandi._

Hannibal wants Will to know about them, too. Wants Will to make the connection. 

Is it a test, just to see if Will can put the pieces together? Or is there something else to be learned, something more reckless? Will's eyes slide from the crime scene photo to the boxes of files stacked on the desk opposite. Half a dozen boxes, overflowing with every piece of paperwork that may have ever been helpful to the case, all crammed into a sad pile of cardboard. Crime scene photos, witness statements, victims' files -- all waiting for that breakthrough, the _ah ha!_ moment that will crack the case. 

Will stands and walks over to the boxes, casually. 

_The walls to the war room are glass, don't show too much interest, don't draw attention. Don't. Draw. Attention._

Will had seen the file, in passing. Had flipped disinterestedly through the papers, once, and then tossed it back on the pile, frustrated and exhausted. Now, Will peruses through the boxes, causally, oh-so-causally, lingering over random papers and occasionally pulling out folders to flip through, hyper aware of the blur of passing bodies through the glass. Will doesn't dive straight to the file he wants. Instead, it's the sixth folder he picks up: a printout of the emailed case file from Italy, bare-bones and roughly translated. The crime scene photos are a faithful replica of the _Primavera,_ almost shocking in their similarity to _Fortitude_ \-- less sophisticated, more instinctive, but Will can see the delicacy of Hannibal’s hand even across the decades. 

Will flips through the pages as quickly as he dares, not even sure what he's looking for until he finds it buried mid-way through the stack of papers. _"A Lithuanian student was brought in for questioning but released upon arrest of suspect."_

Reckless. Hannibal _wants_ Will to find him. 

Will stands there, hand trembling, _considering_ for a few long seconds. Considering pulling the page from the report before he thinks better of it. For all he knows, Jack has already read this paragraph. Jack may not have paid any particular attention to that sentence, but nothing will draw more attention to it than Jack going back to this file, later, and finding the whole page missing. No, Will has to leave it. Will closes the file and tosses it haphazardly on his pile, wondering all the while if the inspector that suspected Hannibal is still alive, still working for the police. There's no way for Will to find out without drawing attention to them both, though, so Will picks up another file and stares blindly down at the text. 

Then another, and another. 

"I see you're alive after all." 

Jack stands in the doorway, arms crossed.

Will closes the folder in his hands, sets it on top of the pile now eleven files tall and leaning precariously to the left. 

"I'm feeling much better, Jack, thank you for asking."

Jack's expression doesn't change.

"You're getting sick a lot lately."

"I've been sick twice."

"In just a couple of months."

Will frowns. "I'm not sure what you want me to say. Sorry for not getting a flu shot? Sorry for letting myself get sneezed on by a toddler last week?"

To be fair, Will actually _did_ have a toddler sneeze directly onto him in the checkout line at the grocery store a few days prior. The child's mother looked tired -- too exhausted to apologize as the kid kept trying to hand Will a spit-covered toy giraffe from over her shoulder, too sleep-deprived to worry about what a strange man in the queue thought about her parenting. The dark circles under her eyes screamed _single mother._ So did her bare ring finger, her wedding ring tan line. 

"And that's all it was," Jack says evenly, not intoned like a question. "The flu, and then a cold."

"Yes? What are you implying, Jack?"

Jack shrugs. "I'm not implying anything."

Will waits a beat, two.

"Am I supposed to read your mind? Because I'm not very good at that."

"You didn't drive yourself to the crime scene in Annapolis."

Jack's expression is difficult to read, in the way that it often is when he's questioning suspects. He lays out facts like a magician flipping over playing cards: 1, 2, 3, staring down the object of his attention and willing them to crack first, real card still nestled between two fingers. Will doesn’t know what that card even _is,_ doesn’t know what Jack knows (or thinks he knows) and Will is already tired of trying to figure it out.

"Wait... are you concerned about my health?" Will asks, getting defensive even as he tries to keep calm. "Or do you think I'm blowing off work to spend time with my boyfriend?"

Jack blinks, as surprised by Will's outburst as Will is. 

Jack opens his mouth, closes it. Opens it again. "I knew that you were seeing a doctor -"

"Fucking a doctor," Will interrupts. "I _was_ genuinely sick, though. I could get him to write me a doctor's note, if you like."

Jack visibly flounders, the first time that Will’s ever seen that wide-eyed expression on his face. Will doesn’t think that Jack is homophobic, not really -- but sometimes going on the attack is the only way to avoid being on the defense. 

"I don't care that you're spending your... personal time with a man,” Jack says after a few seconds. 

"No," Will spits, starting to get legitimately angry, "you care that I'm taking personal time at all. I don't live at Quantico. Neither do you, for that matter. Which, speaking of, how's Bella doing these days? Do you even _see_ your wife anymore? Or do you just unroll a sleeping bag under your desk?”

Bringing Jack's wife into their argument is a low blow, but even still, Will never could have anticipated the way Jack's face _shatters._ Jack -- the man that Will has seen stare unflinchingly at dismembered corpses -- looks away, closes his eyes, swallows. 

The pit of Will's stomach goes cold. 

Something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong.

"She was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer," Jack says finally, the fight gone out of him completely. 

Everything clicks together -- Jack's high-strung behavior, his desperation to solve the case, his snappishness, how _personally_ he's taken Miriam Lass's disappearance all of a sudden, all these years later. Unlike cancer, the Chesapeake Ripper is an enemy Jack can actually _beat._

"Oh my god, Jack, I -- I'm so sorry." Will realizes the inanity of the statement as soon as it's left his mouth, but he doesn't know what else to say. He doesn't know if he should ask about her prognosis, or treatment -- doesn't know if Jack wants to talk about any of it. 

Jack sighs and comes to lean against the desk next to Will, shoulders slumped. 

"She's refusing treatment. I want her to fight, but she wants to 'die with dignity' and her mind is made up."

_And how does that make you feel?_

The words that Jack aren’t saying ring loud and clear in the room around them. His fights with Bella, his guilt, his anger warring with her acceptance, his denial warring with her surety. Will has only met Bella a few times, but she radiates confidence. A spine of steel. Will can’t even imagine what it must be like to argue with her, to try and convince her of something she doesn’t want to do. 

"I realize the irony in my saying this," Will says, "but are you seeing anyone? Talking to anyone about this?"

Jack chuckles. "No. Got the number of any good therapists?"

Will shakes his head. "You would hate my therapist. _I_ hate my therapist, even though we work well together, but I think she would turn you off of the entire field of psychiatry completely."

Thinking about Bedelia is still hard. Raw. Here Will is, trapped between a rock and a hard place, trapped between Jack and Hannibal. He wouldn't _be_ here if it weren't for her. Will doesn't know how to protect Hannibal from Jack, Jack from Hannibal, and a large part of Will still resents that he ever ended up here at all. 

They sit in silence for a few moments.

"I was afraid that you were sick, and that you were hiding it," Jack says, looking down at his hands. The photo of the wound man looms large behind him, protruding blood-soaked weapons creating a gory halo around Jack's bowed head. "Beverly hinted at a romantic angle, but...."

"But knowing me, illness seemed more likely."

"Yeah. Sorry."

 _Catching the Chesapeake Ripper won't save your wife,_ Will wants to say, but he doesn't.

Will shrugs. Water under the bridge, really. 

“Have you considered taking some time off?”

 _Compassionate leave,_ or so the bureau calls it. 

"I will when she..." Jack trails off, clears his throat and starts again. "Things are normal, for now. She's still going to work. Without chemo she'll be herself until suddenly she... isn't."

"You can take leave now, Jack. Go take a trip together. Do something you've always wanted to do but never had the time for. Don't wait until she's too sick to stand."

Jack shakes his head. "The Chesapeake Ripper...."

"Is outsmarting us. I have nothing, you have nothing. We're no closer to catching him than we were this time last year. You can't waste her last -" Will catches himself, "- can't waste the time you have together chasing killers. He'll be here when you get back."

"And his victims?"

"They're lost to us anyway."

Jack looks down at his hands, then back up at the board in front of them.

"He hasn't changed his motive, has he." 

The words aren't intoned like an actual question, but Will answers anyway.

"No. I don't think he has."

Jack nods. 

"How _is_ he choosing them?"

Jack knows that Will knows this, at least. 

"Rudeness," Will says, knowing perfectly well how absurd that sounds. 

_That_ gets Will a sidelong glance, raised eyebrows.

"I know," Will says. "That's why we can't track it. There's no record. It's a derisive sneer, an eye roll, an obnoxious response to a polite inquiry. The Ripper doesn't need a motive, really. He does what he does because he wants to. Because it entertains him. All he needs is a bit of inspiration."

"Rich, cunning, vindictive, and with a massive stick up his ass." Jack snorts, shakes his head. "In _this_ area? That narrows it down to what, five thousand suspects? Ten? Twenty?"

Will laughs, too, and then both of them are laughing harder than the situation actually calls for. 

"Do we start with Congress?" Jack continues, still chuckling. "Venture capitalists? Boutique doctors?"

"If we start looking at lawyers we'll never stop."

Jack looks up at the ceiling. "God help us, we could interview for ten years straight and never run out of suspects."

"We can at least restrict the pool to someone with medical training."

"Because there's such a shortage of medical personnel here," Jack says sarcastically. "He could also be a butcher. Or, someone uncommonly smart who reads a lot of books, and has a lot of practice. We have no idea how many victims he truly has."

That's a sobering thought. Will and Jack have talked about the fact that the Ripper has other kills, somewhere else, either under a different name or in some grave site yet undiscovered. No one is that good at murder on their first try. No one without experience knows how to cover their tracks so thoroughly. 

"We'll get through this, Jack."

Surprisingly, Will finds that he means it. 

There’s an answer, somewhere, somehow. There must be a way to balance Jack and Hannibal. Hannibal and Jack. 

However that might be, Will will find it. 

__________

“Are we going to spend the whole hour in silence?” 

Will snorts but doesn’t peel his eyes away from this week’s flower arrangement: yellow flowers -- daffodils, tulips, daylilies -- interspersed with flat clusters of white. They look like Queen Anne’s Lace, but Will is almost completely sure that they’re hemlock, instead.

Bedelia’s flowers are always fucking poisonous. 

Bedelia seems, to the outside observer, to be impartial, regal, aloof. But Will can see her now -- he can see Hannibal’s influence woven around the curl of her mouth, in the coolness of her gaze. Does she know? Does she know how she had been altered?

 _Has_ she even been altered? Or was she always like this, cut from the same cloth as Hannibal, but never forged in the fires that made Hannibal into a predator? Is she what Hannibal would have been, without his suffering?

“Do we have anything to talk about?” he says finally. 

“You tell me,” she says. “I have not seen anything unexpected, in the news.”

As though Will would ever make that kind of decision without telling Bedelia, first. As though Will could ever decide to turn Hannibal in, at all. Hannibal has somehow extended his influence into every nook and cranny of Will’s life -- he never could have turned him in, not without destroying himself in the process. 

Will looks at Bedelia, finally. To an outside observer it’s just another appointment, another day in Bedelia’s office. She’s as delicate and elegant as she ever is, golden blonde hair cascading over her shoulders and cutting cheekbones and perfectly stylish dress.

Will hates her.

Viciously. 

She’s also the only person who truly understands him, now. The only person he can really relate to.

“What does he have on you?” Will asks, finally. 

Bedelia cocks her head and doesn’t reply.

“Come on,” he continues. “You owe him something, right? Why else hand him the one person in the world who can understand him, practically gift-wrapped?” 

“You think,” she says, “that you’re some kind of present? For Hannibal?”

God help him, even with everything that he’s been through this past week, Will _still_ can’t get a good read on her.

“Aren’t I?”

Bedelia stares, and stares, and stares.

“You never thought I would turn him in. Even from that first day, the _very_ first time you told me about him. You knew he was a serial killer then, and you knew that if I met him I would never be able to turn him in.”

“No. But I also never truly intended to introduce you, either.”

Will shakes his head, disbelieving, but she keeps going.

“I had very little to gain from introducing you, and very much to lose.”

Will snorts. “Hannibal’s favor,” he points out, because that, at least, seems obvious.

Bedelia’s lips quirk into an approximation of a smile. “Hannibal does not know about my meddling. Therefore there is,” she says, “no favor to gain. But I understand why you would think there might be.”

Will frowns. He can’t tell if she’s lying, can’t tell if she’s telling the truth, but -- but he thinks she might be telling the truth.

“Then why?”

“You asked me a question. I gave you an answer.”

_Do you know anyone who would take me as I am? Who would be able to love me, just as I am?_

She could have lied. Could have deflected, or could have chosen not to answer. But Bedelia answered because she wanted to see what he would do. Because she was _curious,_ even while she may claim to be an impassive observer. 

Will can’t help but wonder if that kind of curiosity is her natural state, or if that’s something she picked up after however many years of working with Hannibal. Wonders if everyone who meets Hannibal comes away altered, slightly less themselves and slightly more of Hannibal, with every meeting. 

Will wonders about Alana. 

Wonders about Hannibal’s patients. 

About himself. 

“You don’t talk to him about me?”

“I talk to Hannibal, my patient, about his partner William, who he met at the opera, and who he cares for very much. I do not talk to him about my patient Will Graham.”

“He doesn’t know that I’m your patient?”

“No.”

They look at one another, gulf between them vast but shrinking. 

Will considers. If Hannibal were to find out about Bedelia’s meddling -- if Will were to _tell_ him -- it’s hard to say how he might react. He likely knows that Bedelia knows, about him, or that she at least has suspicions. Bearing that in mind, would he be thankful? Angry?

On the other hand, Bedelia is far too smart to have the knowledge that she does without insurance. Will, in his haze of rage and pain, gave her that information on a silver platter, unthinking. If she were to disappear -- if Will were to _suggest_ that she disappear -- there’s no doubt that some note would turn up on Jack Crawford’s desk telling exactly where to look, if he wants to catch the Chesapeake Ripper. 

Will could weaponize Hannibal against Bedelia, but at what cost?

Likewise, Bedelia could weaponize Hannibal against Will. If she were to tell Hannibal that Will suspects him, wants to arrest him… would Hannibal stop to listen to Will, or would he eliminate the threat before Will could even realize something was wrong?

Either of them could wield Hannibal as a weapon, but all of them would lose. 

Bedelia knows this. 

Will knows this. 

They look at one another, bookends across the room, changing Hannibal’s life and being irrevocably changed by him in turn. 

Will snorts out a laugh, breaking the tension, and shakes his head, still laughing. “Ah, the exquisite banality of it all,” he says. “The fate of all these lives in our hands, and here we are.”

“Here we are,” Bedelia says. 

“If I speak in confidence, in _therapy,_ will you repeat any of what I say to Hannibal?”

“No,” she says. “I have not, and I will not.”

Will has no real reason to trust her, but he has no real reason not to, either. 

“Jack’s wife has terminal cancer,” he says, matter-of-fact. “I could use some advice.”

Bedelia blinks, cocks her head, and listens. 

__________

The days tumble on, remarkable only for their unremarkability. 

"The Ripper's too clever to strike again any time soon," Will says, the next time Hannibal asks about the case. “He’s almost certainly going to take a break -- two or three months, if not longer.”

Hannibal frowns, clearly not expecting Will’s pronouncement. “You don’t believe that the Ripper has another sounder planned?”

“That would be predictable,” Will says with a grin and a shake of his head. “And the Chesapeake Ripper is anything _but_ predictable. No… the smartest course of action is to lay in wait. Jack is all riled up, working long hours, ready to catch the Ripper. To strike again so soon is exactly what Jack wants: more evidence, more crime scenes, more victims to build a better and better profile. Jack is ready to strike now. There’s nothing that would be more devastating to Jack than for the Ripper to leave him hanging, resources on the hook, dozens of techs and agents pulling overtime shifts for nothing.”

Hannibal looks thoughtful. 

Will… well, Will wants a break from hunting Hannibal. From hunting much of anything at all. And what’s the point of dating the most notorious serial killer in the world if he can’t even get a vacation out of it?

“Early humans used a method called predation hunting,” Will continues. “Plenty of other animals could run faster, jump higher, or swipe with deadly claws. But what humans had was stamina. Stamina, and patience. A human could walk behind their prey for hours or even days at a time. Those prey that _could_ sprint couldn’t sprint forever. Sooner or later, they would have to stop running. To rest. And sooner or later, the humans would catch up.” 

Will peeks up at Hannibal, who is listening raptly.

“How long could that pattern go on? The prey would grow tired, eventually. It would have to stop for rest, even knowing that the predator was never far behind. Slow, and inexorable, like the tides. Like fate. Now Jack -- Jack is a modern man. He has the purity of focus that can only be born of centuries of specialization, carefully crafted into a relentless agent. Modern conveniences can keep him alive, keep him warm and fed and safe, while he puts every single ounce of his energy into the hunt. He can chase the Ripper to the ends of the Earth… for a while. But the Ripper? The Ripper is primal, ancient, torn straight out of the psyche of our earliest ancestors. Once he’s chosen a target, there’s nowhere that target can run that the Ripper won’t find them. 

“Right now, the Ripper isn’t just killing for fun. He’s toying with the BAU. Why play ball with Jack Crawford when the man is ready for it? The smartest move is to let Jack destroy himself. To let Jack drive himself into exhaustion, to spend every resource and play every card in his deck, so that when the Ripper strikes again, Jack is utterly unprepared.” Will grins. “That would be the smartest move, and the Chesapeake Ripper is anything but stupid.”

Hannibal nods, putting on a show of looking contemplative but with a calculating shadow behind his eyes. A third sounder was clearly in the works -- and just as clearly, he doesn’t want to make a move that Will would class as _stupid._

“Well in that case, we should go somewhere for the holidays,” Hannibal says. 

And the Chesapeake Ripper’s plans have changed, just like that. 

A snap of Will’s fingers.

Will lets a smile curl around his lips. “A trip? Where?”

“Somewhere you’ve never been before. I suppose I wouldn’t be able to persuade you to come to Europe with me?”

Will shakes his head, remorseful. He _would_ like to go to Europe with Hannibal, one day, but he knows better than to push Jack quite so early. “Jack won’t want me on the wrong side of the Atlantic. _I_ know that the Ripper isn’t going to strike again, but Jack doesn’t, and he’ll want me close to home.”

Hannibal nods. “Are there any American cities that have piqued your interest, one that you’ve never had the opportunity to visit?”

Will thinks about the question. He _has_ traveled all over the country, but analyzing crime scenes and acting as a tourist are two wildly different things. Hannibal wants to show him something, he thinks. Wants to take Will around and gift him the experience of something new. A city from an old case won’t do. 

"I've actually never been to Savannah," Will says finally, "though having grown up in New Orleans I imagine they're fairly similar."

"Being two southern American cities of similar provenance, they have much in common. Though Savannah has a veneer of respectability that New Orleans lacks."

Will grins, trying to imagine Hannibal on Bourbon Street weaving amongst the drunkards and partiers. Fertile hunting grounds, there, though Hannibal would probably never do something so reckless as kill with Will in tow. 

_Probably._

"Are you calling those of us from Nola unrespectable?" Will teases. 

"Hardly," Hannibal says with surprising gravity. "New Orleans is a city of highs and lows. The food is richer, but its shadows are darker. New Orleans is a city that knows itself."

Hannibal stares at Will, eyes dark. 

“We’ll go to Savannah, then,” Will says. 

Will expects a fight from Jack, when he says that he wants to go to Savannah for Christmas, but instead Jack just nods thoughtfully.

“We all need a break, I think,” Jack says, the absolute last thing that Will expected him to say. “I’ve been thinking about what you said before. I want to take Bella back to Italy, before it’s too late.”

Will blinks at Jack, shocked.

Jack chuckles. “You just spent the last ten minutes explaining to me all of the reasons why the Ripper won’t strike anytime soon. Is it such a surprise?”

Will opens his mouth to respond, realizes that he’s been struck completely off-guard and has nothing to actually _say,_ and closes it. 

“You look like a goldfish.”

“The Chesapeake Ripper…”

Jack shrugs. “You haven’t been wrong about the Ripper yet. If you say he won’t kill, I believe you. I’m going to spend some time with my wife.”

And that’s that. 

  
  


Will spends Christmas with Hannibal in a Victorian mansion overlooking Forsythe park, with Hannibal playing enthusiastic tour guide. There are many vacations, just like this, waiting in Will’s future -- Hannibal taking him to the best restaurants, showing him each of the most interesting, treasured places each city has to offer. Hannibal wants to give Will the world, wants to be tied into every happy moment that Will has until Will wouldn’t even know how to extricate his life from Hannibal’s.

Will wants to let him.

On the first snow of the season back in Wolf Trap, Will spends hours running with the dogs, throwing snowballs for them to snap to pieces with their hunter's jaws, laughing. 

The days tumble on, and Will, for once, is happy. 

__________

The specter of Valentines day creeps up, and along with it, a very strange series of killings that look like animal attacks but _feel_ like murders. Will tells Hannibal about them over an appetizer of _foie gras au torchon._

“A human who kills as an animal,” Hannibal says, just a shade too focused to be convincingly casual. “An uncommon pathology, certainly.”

Will could ask. But…

He kind of wants to see what Hannibal will do. 

__________

"I don't like that Will isn't answering his phone," Jack says, pulling the car into an empty parallel parking space.

"It's early." Alana hadn't exactly been thrilled to get a phone call from Jack at dark-o'clock in the morning this morning, but she knew that if she didn't come Jack would show up at Will's house unannounced and drag him out of bed. She can’t do much to protect Will from Jack’s overstepping, but she can at least do _this._

"He didn't used to ignore my calls."

"He's been enforcing firmer boundaries." Alana’s words come out a little sharper than she intends, but they’ve been having some variation on this conversation since Jack picked her up in Washington. 

"I don't like that, either." 

Alana gives Jack a _look_ but he doesn't bother to look chagrined. 

"My job is to catch killers, not to coddle agents."

"Will isn't an agent," she points out. "And neither am I."

Instead of acknowledging her words, Jack opens his door and gets out of the car, leaving Alana with no choice but to do the same. 

"Remind me again who we're meeting here?" Jack says, looking up at the large brick house. 

Alana sighs, but accepts the subject change. "His name is Hannibal Lecter. He was Randall Tier's psychiatrist for a few years when he was a teenager."

"And you're sure this Dr. Lecter is one who will overlook doctor-patient privilege?"

"He won't give us anything on the record. Nothing that could be used in court, at least, but I'm hoping he could give us an idea of whether or not we're looking in the right direction."

"Good enough for me."

The sun has only been up for a short while, but Hannibal has always been an early riser. Alana knocks on the door while Jack looks suspiciously around the neighborhood.

Sure enough, they're only waiting for about a minute before the door opens, revealing Hannibal fully-dressed and clearly surprised to see Alana on his doorstep. 

"Alana," Hannibal says, voice warm, "what can I do for you?" His eyes flick over to Jack, but he doesn't say anything.

"Hi Hannibal. This is Special Agent Jack Crawford with the BAU." Jack offers his hand, which Hannibal shakes. "I'm consulting on a case for the FBI, and we were hoping we could ask you a few questions about one of your former patients."

"Of course. Please, come in."

Hannibal holds the door open and gestures inside. As Hannibal leads them through his house, Jack's eyes linger on the decorations -- particularly the full-sized samurai armor, and a few of the paintings. Hannibal politely deposits them in what anyone else would consider a formal sitting room, but Alana knows that this is the room Hannibal both relaxes and entertains guests in. His harpsichord stands prominently in the corner, and there's already a fire lit in the fireplace. 

"Could I offer either of you coffee?" Hannibal says, ever the host.

Jack's eyes light up, but Alana cuts in, saying, "no, that's quite all right, thank you. We'll try not to take too much of your time."

"Actually -"

"We're mostly just checking to see if you could confirm an anonymous tip, off the record," Alana continues, ignoring Jack's attempt to get coffee. He thinks that he can ignore Alana when it suits him, and push her around like one of his agents, but two can play at that game. 

Hannibal's eyes flick back and forth between them. Alana knows Hannibal well enough to tell that he's amused by their exchange, but Jack probably doesn't.

"Randall Tier, you said." Hannibal sits down in an armchair across from them, while Jack huffs. 

Alana nods, and gives him a quick run-down of the crime scenes they had found. Animal attacks that weren't animal attacks, according to Will. Mutilated animals, escalating violence. Hannibal listens attentively until she's finished, and then he talks about what he remembers of Randall Tier, in turn. A patient obsessed with prehistoric predators, obsessed with _becoming_ one of those creatures. A patient with violent tendencies towards others, who wished for the teeth and the claws that would render him powerful. 

"You believe Randall Tier may be responsible for these murders?" Hannibal asks finally, a familiar twist to his mouth -- it’s one that Alana has seen in the mirror. No psychiatrist likes to think that they’ve failed a patient, or that a patient that they attempted to help ended up harming others. 

Almost anyone who works in the psychiatric field long enough will have regrets with a patient, but that never makes it any easier. 

"We don't know," Jack says bluntly. "We’re only here because we received an anonymous tip on our hotline saying that Tier might be responsible. The crimes themselves have been reported as animal attacks, and right now only the FBI knows that a human may be the suspect."

Hannibal nods in understanding. "So whoever reported Randall must know him well, to even suspect him."

Above them, a floorboard squeaks, followed by the distinctive sound of footsteps.

"Excuse me a moment. I had an overnight guest who is clearly awake."

With that, Hannibal ducks out of the room, and his footsteps echo up the stairs.

"He's been very helpful," Jack says, looking speculative. 

"I've known Hannibal for a long time." Alana doesn't know if he would have been quite so helpful, otherwise. They skated past a whole host of ethical concerns that Hannibal may not have overlooked for a stranger.

"Do you think he'd be good at doing what you do?" Alana rolls her eyes -- leave it to Jack to try and recruit a potential witness. "What? If Will is going to periodically be going AWOL I need more people that I can count on."

"It won't kill you to give Will a few days off, Jack."

"It might kill someone else, though. And he’s already had more than a few days off." Jack pulls out his cell phone. " _And_ I'm worried about Will. Last time Will acted unpredictable, he almost died. Something could have happened to him."

"Jack..." Alana doesn't think that Will is sick, or that he's been attacked. Alana thinks that Will is taking some time to himself, but he knows better than to _tell_ Jack that, because Jack would bulldoze over his protestations and show up on his front porch anyway. Jack ignores her, too, as he lifts his cell phone to his ear.

"I won't -"

Across the room, a cell phone starts ringing. 

They both freeze. 

"That," Jack says evenly, after a few long seconds, "is Will's ringtone."

"It's the same ringtone that Will uses,” Alana says firmly, “because Will never changed his from the generic one that came with his phone. Don't jump to conclusions."

Jack hangs up the phone, and a few seconds later, the ringing stops. 

Jack hits a button on his phone, and the ringing starts again. 

"Jack."

The conclusion worth drawing is pretty obvious, to Alana -- Jack had asked a while back if Will was gay. Jack had asked if Will was seeing, or _seeing,_ a doctor, which Will himself confirmed to Alana recently. Hannibal is a doctor, who has never particularly struck Alana as entirely straight, and who had an overnight guest last night. Will not answering his phone makes sense, if it was across the house from where he was sleeping. 

(In Hannibal's bed.)

Alana genuinely feels _bad,_ because Will wouldn't have wanted them to find out about his personal life this way.

Jack stalks across the room and stops in front of the side table with the ringing phone. He doesn't touch it, but he does look up at Alana and say, "looks like Jack Crawford is calling."

"Jack, get back over here and sit down."

Jack raises an eyebrow at her.

"You are not going to interrogate Will about his boyfriend. Pretend like you didn't see that, and we'll continue our interview with Hannibal when he comes back downstairs."

"That's what you think is happening here?"

"Yes?" Alana looks around, not sure what Jack is implying. "What, do you think Hannibal _kidnapped_ Will and has him tied up in the basement?"

Jack opens his mouth to say something, but then appears to think better of it.

"No." He glances down at the cell phone again.

“Then come back over here,” she says, “now.” 

For once in his life, Jack does what she tells him to. 

“You asked me once if Will was dating a man,” she reminds him.

“I know that he is. He told me.”

“Well,” she says, gesturing to the cell phone, “then why are you surprised.”

Jack sits in silence for a few moments. “I can’t say I had given any real thought to who Will might be dating, but….” he looks askance around the room, at the paintings and antiques and the undeniable _Hannibal-ness_ of it all. 

Jack has a point. On the surface, Hannibal should be someone who should get Will’s hackles up immediately, not even mentioning the fact that he’s a _psychiatrist._ But to Alana, who knows them both? It makes a strange sort of sense. 

“Did you know about this?” Jack asks eventually.

“I did not.” 

Jack raises an eyebrow at her. 

“Do you really think I would have brought you here if I knew?”

“No. You wouldn’t have.”

“No,” Alana repeats, “I wouldn’t have.”

__________

Will waking alone in Hannibal's bed isn't an uncommon occurrence. 

Will waking, alone, in bed, to the sound of voices drifting up the stairs, _is._ He cracks a bleary eye open to look at the clock -- 7:36 -- and groans. Hannibal didn't say anything about expecting visitors, and who the hell shows up unannounced at 7:36 on a _Saturday morning?_

Will waits a few minutes to make sure that Hannibal isn't just politely escaping some Jehovah's Witnesses. The voices travel through the house -- not Jehovah's Witnesses -- and Will is forced to consider his options. He's _comfortable._ Hannibal's bed is obscenely cozy, and Will had planned on laying here with his face smushed into the pillow for at least another hour. At some point Hannibal would have wandered back upstairs with a cup of his ridiculously good coffee to pry Will out of bed, and Will could have coaxed Hannibal back _into_ bed for round two.

Will had _plans._

(Hannibal likes the way Will becomes soft and pliant in the morning, and Will likes how much Hannibal likes it.)

Drifting in and out of sleep, Will listens for the quieting of voices, but instead hears a continuous murmur. Will tries to ignore the pressure in his bladder -- if he gets up and goes to the bathroom, he'll pop this gossamer bubble of dreams and stillness. The real world will come pouring in. 

Eventually, nature wins out, and Will emerges from the bed and pads across the room to the en-suite bathroom to relieve himself and brush his teeth. 

Will leaves the bathroom to find Hannibal standing in the bedroom, waiting for him. 

"Oh, hey." Will runs a hand through his unruly hair, trying to make it look less ridiculous. "Are those people gone?"

"Unfortunately, no," Hannibal says, raking his eyes down Will’s body. "Jack Crawford and Alana Bloom are here."

Will blinks. His first semi-hysterical thought is that Jack tracked his cell phone to Hannibal's house, and is here to drag Will into the field kicking and screaming. But that doesn't actually make sense -- Jack has no reason to do that, and he probably wouldn't have been talking to Hannibal in Hannibal's sitting room for half an hour if he was here for Will. 

"Apparently someone left an anonymous tip that your recent string of murders may have been committed by a former patient of mine. Jack wanted my advice as to whether or not that line of inquiry would be worth investigating."

Will looks at Hannibal suspiciously -- even though Hannibal stands before him, seemingly guileless and open, Will knows better. He told Hannibal about the animal case two days ago, and then all of a sudden there's an 'anonymous tip' that brought Jack Crawford to Hannibal's door? Will has never believed in coincidences, and he _particularly_ doesn't when Hannibal is involved.

"If you wanted to meet Jack, you could have just said something." Will intends for his tone to be chastising, but instead the words tumble out fond and warm. 

Will takes this -- the anonymous tip, Jack downstairs -- and slots it into the picture he's building of the real Hannibal. Of the life they would live, together. Hannibal won't do something so straightforward as _ask_ for something that he wants. No, instead he'll carefully manipulate the circumstances surrounding his desires so that they just so happen to come to fruition, just how he wants them, but without having to take credit, or responsibility, for them. 

He's a puppet-master pretending to be a marionette, strings wrapped around his joints, waiting to dance. 

Will should probably be angry, but the situation is just... so... Hannibal.

"I have no particular desire to meet Jack Crawford, outside of a general curiosity." Hannibal's words are sincere, genuine. Nothing about his tone or body language says that he's lying.

"Okay," Will says, taking a step closer to Hannibal, "so it's not that you wanted to meet Jack...." He takes another step, and then another, until he's right in Hannibal's personal space. Will cocks his head and bites his lip, considering. "It's not that you wanted to meet Jack, it's that you wanted Jack to meet you." Hannibal says nothing. "You're not my dirty little secret, you know."

"I never thought that I was." Hannibal wraps his hands around Will's waist and pulls Will flush against him, hips to chest.

"Uh huh," Will says, nuzzling lightly against Hannibal's neck. "But you want to mark your territory, anyway."

"I've done no such thing."

Will runs the tip of his nose over the shell of Hannibal's ear, feather-light, then whispers, "I see you."

When he pulls away, he catches a flash in Hannibal's eyes -- darkness straining at the seams of his person-suit. It's gone before Will could even put a name to it, leaving Hannibal, indulgent boyfriend, consummate psychiatric professional. 

"Jack and Alana don't yet know that you're here," Hannibal says, continuing as though Will had said nothing, "so you can proceed however you wish. You need not come downstairs, if you would rather keep your private life private. I only wanted to let you know that they're there, so you would not walk into the room blindly."

Hannibal wouldn't go through all that effort, only for Will to be able to choose not to comply at the last minute. Hannibal wants him to _think_ that he has the final say, but Hannibal must have ensured that he would get his way, regardless of Will's actions. Will glances over at the bedside table, and sure enough, his cell phone isn't there.

Will must have left it downstairs, last night. 

(Or, perhaps, Hannibal moved it downstairs.)

"Jack would have taken this opportunity to call me for probably the twentieth time," Will says, unable to contain his wry smile. _I see you._ "If my phone is downstairs, then he already knows I'm here."

Hannibal says nothing, which means he already knows that Will's phone is in the same room he brought Jack and Alana to.

Will nods, then slinks away from Hannibal to his drawer. He changes his underwear -- making something of a show of it -- pulls on a pair of pants, and then goes to Hannibal's closet and grabs one of his softest cashmere sweaters. Pulling the sweater over his head feels like foreplay -- a reverse striptease. Hannibal’s eyes are dark and possessive, a mirror more accurate than anything made of glass. The shoulders fit a little loosely, and the sleeves are a touch too long. Any casual observer could tell that Will isn't wearing his own clothing.

Jack is not a casual observer.

Neither is Alana, for that matter. 

"Shall we?"

Will makes to walk past Hannibal, but instead finds himself spun around and pinned to the bedroom door, Hannibal looming large and imposing in his field of vision. Will relaxes back against the wood, allowing his body to fall open -- arms defenseless by his sides, neck tilted back, belly vulnerable. Interacting with Hannibal -- the real Hannibal -- makes for a delicate dance. Hannibal likes to be in charge. Hannibal likes to be in control. Hannibal likes to play the puppet-master, the toy-maker -- wind them up, and watch them go. Will can _see_ Hannibal. It's time he affords Hannibal the same courtesy. Seeing and being seen. 

"You are very difficult to manipulate," Hannibal says, even-toned and intimate, giving up on any pretense of deniability. 

"I can see through your design."

Will knows Hannibal. And now Hannibal knows that Will knows. 

"I strive to be unpredictable, and yet you're the Orpheus to my Eurydice. I always find you one step in front of me, waiting for me to catch up."

“Is this the afterlife?” Will says. “Or just a strange dream?”

Hannibal doesn’t reply, except to run a fingertip down Will’s jawline. 

The rest of the myth stretches out between them, unsaid -- that Orpheus can only _have_ Eurydice if he never stops to look, that Will can doom them both with his need to _see_. That their salvation lies in blindly trusting Hannibal, instead of trusting his own senses. 

"It's not that I can predict you, Hannibal, it's that I understand you,” Will says finally. “It is your actions that inform me. Nothing more." 

A crown of antlers begins to sprout from Hannibal's head, black and blood-soaked. They stretch up, and up, and up, out of Will's field of vision. He wants to follow their lines with his eyes, wants to appreciate their majesty -- but he and Hannibal are pressed far too close together for Hannibal to miss Will's wandering attention. Instead they grow in the periphery, warning. Warning of something rich. Something dark. In the corner of his eye, Will can see the stag, tossing its head. Waiting. 

Hannibal's eyes glint red and blood drips down his face. 

"What did you want from this... exercise?" Will murmurs into the space between them. 

"I wanted to see what you would do."

Honest. Bare. Take-me-or-leave-me. 

_Careful Hannibal,_ Will wants to say, _your person-suit is slipping._

"And what am I doing?"

"Whatever I want you to, it seems."

Will can't help the grin that stretches across his face. 

"And how does that make you feel?"

"Powerful," Hannibal says, "and powerless." Hannibal clasps Will's hand, brushes a kiss against his knuckles. 

“We can be powerful and powerless together. We can derive our power from one another, and be stronger for it.” 

Hannibal looks at Will, and Will looks at Hannibal. The antlers melt away and in the blink of an eye Will is looking at his boyfriend again. 

“C’mon. Jack is waiting.”

  
  


Will comes downstairs to an uncomfortable silence, with Alana and Jack sitting tensely on opposite sides of the settee. 

“Agent Crawford,” Hannibal says over Will’s shoulder, “how do you take your coffee?”

“Black is fine.”

The air behind Will shifts, and then he’s alone with his coworkers. Ignoring the tension, Will walks over and picks up his cell phone. Nine missed calls from Jack. 

No surprise there. 

Will pockets his phone, then ambles over to one of the armchairs and sits across from Jack and Alana. Jack says nothing -- just stares, eyebrows raised, waiting for Will to say something.

Will raises his eyebrows back. He refuses to look -- or _feel_ \-- guilty. Will hasn’t done anything wrong, technically.

At least, not in regards to Randal Tier. 

“Do you have something to say, Jack?”

Jack stares at Will for just long enough that Will starts to worry that Jack suspects something. Then, Jack laughs. 

“To be honest,” Jack says in a low voice designed not to carry, “ _he_ doesn’t really seem like your type.” Then, in a more normal tone, “you should keep your phone near your person all the time, Will. This could have been an emergency.”

“You have Alana.”

“Nevertheless.”

Will rolls his eyes. “You know how to solve crimes without me, Jack. I know that you do.”

“I can get to California without taking a plane, too, but that doesn’t mean I want to waste days of my time driving across the country when I could spend a few hours in the air.”

The comparison is clumsy, but Will gets the picture.

“And to be frank,” Jack continues, “we should have heard about this from you.”

Will frowns. “Heard about what?”

“Your boyfriend has information on the case we’re working on, but we heard that from an anonymous tip, not from the member of our team that has his boots on the ground.”

Footsteps herald Hannibal’s return, which means he either wants Will to be aware of his presence, or he’s pretending to be harmless in front of their guests. 

Probably both.

“I don’t tell Hannibal about my cases,” Will lies, “just like Hannibal doesn’t tell me about his patients. We hadn’t talked about Randal Tier until about ten minutes ago. If we had, you _would_ have heard about him from me.”

“Most likely,” Hannibal says, handing Will a cup of coffee from the tray he’s carrying, “the tip came from a family member, or someone close to Randal who is aware of his delusions, and has reason to believe that Randal was ready to act on those delusions.” He hands coffee to Alana, then to Jack, and comes to stand at Will’s elbow. 

Alana takes a sip of her coffee, then aims a pointed look at Jack. “We only knew to talk to Hannibal after the tip because you pulled his medical records. Without those, we wouldn’t be here either.”

Jack holds up a hand in defeat. 

“Okay, okay, I get it. There’s no way Will could have known. Sounds like the next step is to bring Tier in,” Jack says, “if what Dr. Lecter has to say is true.”

Will looks up at Hannibal, and Hannibal looks down at Will, satisfied. 

“I trust Hannibal’s judgement,” Will says. “Bring him in, execute a search warrant. If it is him, he’ll have tools. Bones. Even if we don’t find the suit we should be able to find something.” 

“Circumstantial evidence -”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, Jack. _If_ we get to it.”

__________

They don’t just find bones, tools -- they find the suit, covered in blood, and then Randall is only too happy to talk to them about his _becoming._

“Guess your boyfriend knew what he was talking about,” Jack says, later. 

“Guess he did.”

__________

“How was yesterday’s crime scene?” Hannibal asks, unfurling his picnic blanket. 

Hannibal had surprised Will with a picnic lunch, so Will had brought him down to a sunny clearing by the river. The spring sun finally shines warm enough to be outdoors comfortably, and it seems both Will and Hannibal wish to take advantage. Will starfishes out on the blanket Hannibal brought, face upturned, enjoying the sunlight. 

“It was interesting,” Will says, eyes closed. “Victim was some musician trying to hitchhike to Florida.”

“Sounds like the East Coast killer.”

An uninspired name for an uninspired killer. His MO is to strangle hitchhikers and leave them blindfolded with their hands clasped in prayer.

“It does,” Will agrees, “but it wasn’t. It was definitely the work of a copycat.”

Creating a profile took about ten minutes, based entirely on previous case files -- abusive father, catholic guilt -- and the powers that be will spend the next few days pulling together a list of potential suspects. Until then, Will can relax. They may end up catching the real killer, but that’s not whose work Will saw yesterday. 

“Do you often encounter copycats?”

Will makes a contemplative sound. “They’re less common than people think. Convincing ones, anyway.”

“Clearly this was not, as you already know that it wasn’t your killer.”

“I don’t think he was trying to be convincing. The crime scene was more of a… a sandbox, I suppose. He was playing. Doing something different than normal.” 

Will knows his tone is off. He knows, because he’s doing it on purpose. A little too familiar, a little too fond -- _not_ how Will would ordinarily talk about a murderer. 

“You have some idea of who the real killer is?”

Will glances at Hannibal out of the corner of his eye and smiles indulgently. 

“I think that it was the Chesapeake Ripper.”

Hannibal blinks in surprise. “Your copycat?” Will nods. “An interesting conclusion for you to draw. Why do you think that it was the Ripper, of all people?”

Will tilts his head back to look at the sky, shrugs, casual as could be. “Hard to explain. You spend enough time with a killer and you get to know his tells. This was definitely not the work of the East Coast killer. He’s too frantic, too driven by impulse. This victim had the slow, careful meticulousness of the Ripper. I don’t have any proof -- it’s just a feeling.”

“You believed that the Ripper would stop killing for a time.”

Will shakes his head. “No. The man behind the mantle may set the ‘Chesapeake Ripper’ back on the shelf, but that’s a mask he wears -- not the other way around. He’s not driven by compulsion, and so he can put the method down and pick another up just as easily. He’s abstaining from being the Chesapeake Ripper, not abstaining from killing.”

“And what does Jack think of your theory?”

Will rolls his head over to look at Hannibal. “I haven’t told Jack.” There -- a glint of satisfaction in Hannibal’s eye. “Like I said, I have no proof. Just a feeling. I think… well. I think that the Ripper has a lot more kills than what we have on record for him. This didn’t feel new -- this felt like play. Like sometimes he just goes out and tries something different. If I were to tell Jack that, he would have me trawling through ten years of murder records in a hundred mile radius, trying to find another missing piece.”

Hannibal takes a long moment to respond. Will left him plenty of openings -- him keeping secrets from Jack, his suspicion that the Ripper has more kills, the whole _concept_ of the Ripper as a copycat. 

Will revels in the zing of anticipation. Where will Hannibal go with this conversation? When will Hannibal realize?

“Do you think the Ripper is developing a new profile?”

Hannibal can’t resist the allure of hearing Will’s opinion on himself. It’s cute, really. 

“Nah,” Will says, casual and dismissive. “It’s more like a horror writer that writes the occasional romance novel. He is who he is, but sometimes I think he wants to… kill outside the box, so to speak. Do something different. The Ripper’s modus operandi is fairly rigid, and I think he gets bored of it sometimes. The killer -- the real killer, under the MO and the pageantry -- is more creative, more…” Will trails off, partly because he’s searching for the right word, and partly because he’s enjoying the rapt look of attention on Hannibal’s face. “...He’s more _interesting._ There’s more to the man than just the Chesapeake Ripper. The Ripper isn’t driven by impulse, he’s driven by his own entertainment. This? Is just… entertaining.”

“A fascinating insight.”

“Sorry.” Will says, not at all sorry. “I don’t mean to wax poetic.”

“You do seem rather taken with the Ripper.” Hannibal smirks. “Need I be jealous?”

Will laughs. The audacity -- the sheer audacity! Hannibal is positively glowing with satisfaction in his enjoyment of the joke that he _thinks_ only he understands. 

“Sure,” Will says easily, “who knows, one day I may pack a bag and run away with him. Just me and the Ripper, in Bali, or Florence, living happily ever after.”

“And leave me to nurse a broken heart?”

Will puts his hand on top of Hannibal’s, brushes his thumb over Hannibal’s knuckles. “You know I’m not going to break your heart, Hannibal.” He means for the words to come out as light and airy as the rest of their conversation has been, but instead he’s utterly sincere. Hannibal has rewritten him -- shaped him, formed him, recreated him into something different, something more. Will can’t even pretend that anyone else could love him the way that Hannibal does. Can’t pretend that he could love someone other than Hannibal.

And even though Will doesn’t quite have the words, Hannibal understands. That possessive devotion glints in Hannibal’s eyes -- folie à deux. The madness of two.

“C’mon,” Will says, nodding at the picnic basket. “Show me what you brought for us.”

__________

The inevitable happens at the very end of spring, on what will likely be the last crisp evening before the season leans full-tilt into summer. Hannibal adds another log onto what will likely, too, be the last fire of the season, just before the sticky summer air becomes humid enough to drink, sneaking into every crack and crevice of an old house like this one. 

"It has been quite a while since you last spoke about your work," Hannibal says, sitting back down in the armchair across from Will. "I trust everything is well?"

Will glances sideways at Hannibal, then gives a casual shrug. "Honestly? It's been teaching, mostly."

"I noticed that you have not been on many trips, as of late."

Will cradles his heavy crystal tumbler in his hands, weighing both it and Hannibal's words. Runs his finger along the edge of the glass, considering whether he wants to top off his whisky, and what to say, in response to Hannibal. 

"Jack wants us close to home," Will says finally. "He's only accepting bona fide serial killers right now -- not potentials, or unusual crimes, like he sometimes does."

"He's waiting for the Ripper to strike again," Hannibal guesses. 

Will hasn’t told Hannibal about Bella’s cancer, hasn’t given him that kind of ammunition against Jack, for Hannibal surely would have used it. Will considers the whisky in his hands -- only a sip or two left. He nods, absently, in response to Hannibal, then levers himself up and walks over to the bar. 

"It's been months," Will says while giving himself a generous pour. "Jack is convinced that another sounder is right around the corner, and he wants us all to be ready to mobilize at a moment's notice."

"Do you believe him to be correct?"

Will laughs and shakes his head. Caps the whisky bottle, slots it back into its rightful place, and then settles back down into his seat. 

"No. But Jack thinks we're _this close,_ " Will pinches his index finger and thumb together, "and in his mind, just one more kill will give us the breakthrough we need to catch him."

"Perhaps he's right."

A grin cuts across Will's face like a wound. "No," he says. Weighing his glass, weighing his words. He looks into the amber liquid, then up to the fire. "We're not going to catch the Chesapeake Ripper." 

Will's words are calm. Measured. Precise.

"Every killer makes a mistake sooner or later," Hannibal says. 

The fire pops, crackles.

"Not the Ripper. He's too meticulous, too methodical. We won't catch the Ripper unless he wants to be caught."

"Perhaps he won't make a mistake," Hannibal concedes, "but sooner or later you will develop a better profile, one that allows you to catch him."

Will takes a sip of his whiskey and rolls it around his mouth, savoring the smoky taste. He swallows. 

"I already have a better profile," Will says.

The quiet of the room turns sharp. Will has baited the hook, and now Hannibal circles what he _thinks_ is prey. 

"Oh?" Hannibal says, feigning casual interest. "You hadn't mentioned. Is this a recent development?"

The months, weeks, _days,_ have all been ticking down to this. Since making his decision, Will has known that he would have to tell Hannibal, sooner or later, or else Hannibal would do something terribly reckless to get Will's attention. The _Fortitude_ stunt was dangerous enough; the longer Will plays dumb, the bolder Hannibal will get. 

"No," Will says, "it's not recent. It's based on something Zeller said a few months ago." He rolls the whisky glass across his bottom lip, considering. 

Where does their story begin? Where do they end?

"See, the thing is -- I could never quite understand the Ripper. Most killers take a few minutes to unravel, at most. Their impulses are laid bare in their actions. They write symphonies in blood spatter, they carve love songs in flesh. But the Ripper… my problem was that I could never _see_ the Ripper. I could've told you that he kills in sounders. That he views his victims as pigs, that he considers them beneath him. I could've told you that he must have medical training, given his surgical trophies, but..." Will flicks his eyes towards Hannibal, "...that doesn't tell you much, does it?"

"No. Most serial killers take trophies."

"Most other killers are driven to do what they do. Their destruction is compulsion, like picking at a scab, or poking at a sore tooth. Most of them couldn't stop, even if they tried. And many of them _have_ tried, going months or years without killing, only to succumb to the urge in a moment of weakness."

"But not the Ripper," Hannibal says.

"No," Will agrees, "not the Ripper. He kills because he is inspired. Because doing so entertains him, in a way that ordinary people cannot. Creation, from destruction."

"Sounds as though you believe your Ripper to be playing god."

 _Your Ripper._ Will grins. 

"Trophies," Will says with a shake of his head, instead of taking Hannibal's bait. "What a loaded word. _Surgical trophies._ That's the thorn that pricked me, over and over again. Killers keep trophies to remember their victims, or to relive their crimes, but the Ripper isn't so vulgar, so... pedestrian. If there's one thing I know for sure, it's that the Ripper isn't sitting in a cabin in the woods, surrounded by organs in jars. And yet every motive for keeping trophies brought me down the path of obsession and devotion, two things that never fit with the rest of the Ripper's profile. The Ripper isn't obsessed with his victims, nor is he devoted to maintaining their remains, so why bother? Why go through all that trouble?"

Hannibal sits rigid with a hunter's focus, hanging on Will's every word, but Will lets his last statement rest. He takes another sip of his drink, swirls the whisky in his glass like it's wine. Will isn't a hunter, he's a fisherman -- he waits for his prey to come to _him._

Hannibal breaks first. 

"So it was your understanding of these trophies that influenced your new profile?"

Hook, line, sinker. 

_Careful, Hannibal, your person-suit is slipping._

"It's something that Zeller said after the last sounder, when a few feet of intestine had been taken. _Maybe the Ripper's making sausage._ " Will stares into the fire, allowing the words to stretch out between them. "It was like someone tore a veil from my eyes. He's not _keeping_ them, he's _eating_ them. From there, the entire profile just... fell into place.

"What defines the Ripper is his pageantry. Each crime scene is carefully stitched together with time and skill, transforming muscles and sinew into art. He would do the same with the meat he takes with him. If he's eating them, he's cooking them with the same talent, the same _elegance_ that he uses at crime scenes. Any dish served by the Ripper would have to be a work of art. He performs a humiliation in three acts: the murder, to demean the victim; the artistry of the crime scene, to taunt law enforcement; and finally the meal, for whoever is foolish enough to dine at his table. The Ripper is cleverer than all of them combined. He knows it. He revels in it."

For once, Hannibal seems to have nothing to say.

"And so the profile changes," Will continues, "from a recluse hiding in the woods with barrels of formaldehyde, to a wealthy, well-connected surgeon. One who is known for throwing fancy parties with even fancier food that he cooks himself. One who primarily serves organ meats..." Will glances at Hannibal, "...and makes his own sausage."

The fire crackles, pops. 

"And what does Jack think of your new profile?"

Will turns to look at Hannibal properly, face to face for the first time since the conversation began. Hannibal is a statue -- spine straight, eyes blank, face a bloodless mask. Bedelia would say that he's straining at the seams of his person-suit -- or, perhaps, that he's allowing it to fall in tatters around him.

" _Hannibal,_ " Will chides. He knocks back the rest of his whisky, sets the heavy glass on the side table with a decisive _chink._ The space between them has never been so infinitesimal, has never been so vast. Will stands; Hannibal watches. Waiting. Wanting to see what Will will do. 

Will crosses that vast ocean in a few steps and swings himself into Hannibal's lap, straddling him. "Hannibal," he repeats, cupping Hannibal's jaw in his hand, "I would never tell Jack this profile." Hannibal's eyes are dark with flickering fire. "I love you." 

Hannibal clutches at Will's hips with a grip that's sure to bruise. 

Will presses a kiss against Hannibal’s lips, tilts his forehead against Hannibal’s so that they’re breathing the same air. 

“Take me to bed.”

__________

Their coupling is violent - there’s no other way to describe it. Hannibal is savage in ways that Will has only glimpsed in slivers and shards poking out from between the seams of his person-suit.

He strips Will of his clothes, pushing him onto all fours in the middle of Hannibal’s massive bed. He opens Will quickly and without undue care, though he targets Will’s prostate with ruthless doctor’s precision. Will can do little more than hold on when Hannibal enters him and weather the storm. Hannibal fists Will’s hair, a burning yank of follicles wrenching in his scalp; he bites a stinging line up Will’s shoulder and digs all ten fingertips into the soft skin of Will’s hips, intending to bruise; he angles his thrusts perfectly, until Will is reduced to grunting and gasping, and then Hannibal comes -- far sooner than Will expected. 

Will has only a few moments of panting incredulity before he’s unceremoniously tossed onto his back. 

(Will’s erection hasn’t waned at all.)

Hannibal looms over him, eyes so dark they look black. Eyes so dark, but with a flash of red. He looks like the wendigo made flesh. 

Will lies docile on the bed. He doesn’t react, when Hannibal sweeps a hand from sternum to groin and back again. He doesn’t react when Hannibal wraps a hand around his throat and applies pressure, more and more, until Will cannot breathe. The moment stretches out between them, electric, with Will’s body as the livewire between them. Will looks into the deep pools of Hannibal’s eyes until his own vision goes cloudy and his cock is jerking against his stomach. 

Hannibal releases his throat just before Will loses consciousness. He allows Will one gasp for air before he does it again, watching Will curiously. Cat and mouse. Waiting to see how Will will react. 

Each time, the pool of precome on Will’s stomach gets wetter, slicker. 

Hannibal releases Will after one final time and tilts his jaw to the side, then bites gently at Will’s throat -- this time gently enough not to bruise. His bites burn a line down Will’s body -- collar bone to pectoral to nipple to ribs to hip, until he shoulders his way between Will’s thighs. 

Perhaps Will should be afraid, to be helpless with a predator between his legs. 

He’s not. 

Hannibal cups the back of one knee and raises it, fingertips pressing a five-pointed brand. Will can see possessiveness in his eyes. It’s no surprise when he turns his mouth to the fleshy skin above Will’s knee and _bites._

Will gasps -- not from the shock, but from the purity of the sensation, from the pain and the heat and the sharpness of Hannibal’s teeth. Hannibal bites hard enough and long enough that Will grabs the sheets in both fists and hangs on, until Will thinks that maybe he’s being tested. Then Hannibal releases him. 

Then, he moves up a few inches, and does it again, and then again. Each time Will’s cock jumps. Each time Will’s hands wrench at the sheets and he sucks air between his teeth, but he doesn’t try to stop Hannibal, doesn’t try to soothe him or deter him. 

Hannibal finally releases Will’s knee, only to pick up the other. Each bite is a brand -- Hannibal, writing his possession across every inch of Will’s body. He bites again, and then again. Three for each thigh, mirrors. 

Only, on the third bite Hannibal doesn’t hold back. His teeth sink into the meat of Will’s upper thigh and, unlike his prior intent to bruise, this time they cut straight through skin, to what feels like muscle and bone. 

The pain is exquisite. Hannibal flicks his eyes up to Will’s, blood pooling around his lips, and to Will’s utter surprise, he orgasms unexpectedly. The feeling that rips through him is intense, so much more intense than Will has ever experienced. His whole body jerks and spasms; his involuntary motions grind his wound into Hannibal’s teeth and he finds himself moaning, wanton and unbidden, _unburdened,_ until all he can do is throw his head back and give in to the sensation. Will is not a masochist, but Hannibal _is_ a sadist, and Will can’t help but ride along in Hannibal’s primal satisfaction. 

Will feels half-unconscious when the hand on his knee loosens and places his leg back on the bed, almost-but-not-quite-gently. The bed dips and the air over Will’s body subtly displaces, until Will opens his eyes to see Hannibal looming over him once again, fierce and terrifying. 

Hannibal kisses him, the taste of blood rich on his tongue. Then he ducks back down and laps Will’s come off of his stomach, ravenous and thorough, until Will legitimately begins to worry that Hannibal may be interested in a round two. But no -- he gets out of bed, then, and walks into the ensuite bathroom. 

Will is dozing by the time Hannibal comes back with a washcloth and dressing for Will’s wound. 

Afterwards, they lie as parentheses, curved towards one another, Will’s head on one pillow and Hannibal’s on the other. 

(Hannibal has never been much for cuddling after sex, but lying here, facing each other, looking deeply into each other’s eyes -- this continuous eye contact may be the most intimate moment of Will’s life.)

Will knows that the smart thing would be to _not_ fall asleep. Even after the sex, Will has never in his life been in as much danger as he is in this moment. He can feel it, in their shared breaths, can see it in the depths of Hannibal’s gaze. He sees an image of himself, drifting off to sleep, only to wake with Hannibal’s hands wrapped around his throat, Hannibal’s hard body pressed against his from behind. This time, it’s not a tease, not a test, not an intimate moment in sex, but a violent act -- a murder. Even still, Will doesn’t thrash, doesn’t fight -- just succumbs willingly into the dark. 

The image is so vivid that Will isn’t even sure if it originates from him, or from Hannibal. 

And, perhaps against his better judgement, he drifts off to sleep with his face inches from the Chesapeake Ripper’s. 

__________

Will wakes. 

Will blinks his eyes open, early-morning sun peaking through a gap in the curtain. Will didn’t expect to be killed in the night, specifically, but there’s a pleasant sort of satisfaction of having lived -- the kind of satisfaction that only comes from taking a gamble and winning, spinning the roulette wheel, playing the flush. 

Will _hurts._ His ass, his neck, this _thighs._ The bite mark throbs in time with his heartbeat, surely a permanent reminder of Hannibal’s claim on him. 

(There’s no turning back, now. He and Hannibal are in this together until the end, whatever end they may meet. It’s done. _It’s done._ He’s thrown them both off the cliff together, and they didn’t succumb to the tumultuous seas.)

Will doesn’t bother getting dressed -- what’s the point? -- instead tugging Hannibal’s bathrobe over his shoulders, tying it indecently loose around the waist, finger-shaped bruises and bite marks on display. 

Hannibal, of course, will be in the kitchen. 

Will walks downstairs (gingerly, limping). The bite wound pulls with every step and Will wonders, distantly, if he should receive stitches for it. 

He can’t bring himself to be concerned. 

Will can’t help but remember that first night that he came here after learning of Hannibal’s true nature. Will had to hide himself, then. He had to re-dress like a normal, functioning person, and go into Hannibal’s kitchen pretending ignorance, innocence. 

This time, Will is free. Nude, except for the bathrobe. 

There’s nothing but the truth between them, now. 

The whole house smells like coffee and eggs. Will pads barefoot through the entryway, the parlor, the dining room, until he can lean his shoulder against the doorway to the kitchen. Hannibal glows in the morning light. He looks as soft as he ever does, hair tousled and sweater soft. There’s coffee steaming in the french press while Hannibal chops vegetables.

This is Will’s life now. 

Will’s future. 

Hannibal looks up. His eyes crinkle with his smile, sunlight in his hair, and Will thinks, viciously, _mine._

No one will take Hannibal away from him. 

“Good morning,” Hannibal says, scooping the chopped vegetables off the cutting board and depositing them into a skillet with eggs. 

“Morning.” Will scratches as his thigh, then winces at the ache. “What’s for breakfast?”

Hannibal’s eyes trail down to where the bite mark is, and he fails to answer for a few long seconds, seemingly distracted by the wound he can’t see. “Protein scramble,” Hannibal says finally. He grabs his wooden spoon almost absentmindedly, stirring the eggs. Will preens, a bit -- it’s not often that he makes Hannibal forget about his cooking. 

_Protein scramble._ Will snorts, unable to help himself. Hannibal’s eyes snap up to meet his own, at the noise, and understanding passes between them easily this time. 

Of course Hannibal has put the pieces together. He knows, now, that Will came to his house a wreck after the last sounder because he had figured out Hannibal’s secret. In a way, this is a do-over. The morning after they could have had, if they had trusted one another just a _bit_ more, if they had known one another just a _bit_ longer. 

(Will doesn’t have any regrets, though. He wasn’t ready, then. Neither was Hannibal. If he had told Hannibal the truth, Hannibal certainly would have killed him. This is how it had to be.) 

Will doesn’t need to wait for Hannibal anymore; doesn’t need to linger in doorways, an exit still in reach. He wanders into the kitchen and levers himself up onto the counter next to the stove, allowing his thighs to fall open, obvious at a glance that he didn’t bother with underwear before coming downstairs. 

Hannibal spends another few seconds scrambling the eggs, turns the burner off, and steps into the space Will has left for him. 

“How are you feeling?” Hannibal asks, placing a possessive hand on bare skin just below his bite, close enough to sting. 

“Sore,” Will answers honestly. “Will it scar?”

Hannibal brushes a thumb over the bandage. “Yes.”

“Good.”

Hannibal presses a kiss against Will’s lips.

“Breakfast?” Hannibal offers. 

Will nods -- languid, easy, _giddy._ For a few long seconds Hannibal doesn’t move. When he does, he leans in towards Will’s chest, and Will thinks _fuck breakfast,_ but then Hannibal takes a step back, plate and fork in hand where he grabbed them from behind Will. Hannibal dishes some eggs onto the plate inelegantly -- the first time Will has seen Hannibal _inelegant_ , ever -- but Hannibal appears to be as unwilling to leave the vee of Will’s thighs as Will is to let him, and so he fumbles with the plate and wooden spoon until he has a reasonable portion. 

Will wonders which of Hannibal’s victims made it into breakfast. _Fortitude_ , maybe, with all of that missing meat from her calf. 

Hannibal gathers some egg onto the fork, then holds it up to Will’s mouth. 

Will smirks. _I see you._

Will allows his mouth to drop open, pink lips and soft tongue waiting for Hannibal. Hannibal’s eyes focus intently on the fork entering Will’s mouth, on Will’s lips closing around the food. When Hannibal withdraws the fork, Will chases after it with his tongue, putting on a bit of a show. 

Hannibal’s eyes are so, so dark. Fathomless. 

Will chews slowly, savoring. 

Hannibal offers him another, then another. Hannibal’s other hand lands on his thigh and then creeps upward, brushing over bruises, until it reaches the junction between his legs. 

(Will hadn’t even noticed his cock perking up, but Hannibal clearly has.)

Hannibal tugs him to full hardness before offering Will another bite. Then, he alternates -- a few strokes, then a bite of food, a few strokes, another bite of food, until Will is a shivering mess. Until Will can’t help but moan around every mouthful, until Will fucks up into Hannibal’s fist every time he stops. The motions aren’t enough to get Will off, not like this. They continue this way until the plate is empty, Will’s belly full. Then Hannibal pushes the fork and empty plate aside. 

Taking half a step back, Hannibal regards Will: bathrobe untied, bite marks and bandage and bruises, and hard, leaking cock. 

Will grins, cocks his head, fully aware of the picture he’s presenting. Fully aware of Hannibal’s heart, Hannibal’s appetites. 

“How do you want me?”

_You can have me._

__________

Later, Will tucks his head up under Hannibal’s chin, lays his hand over Hannibal’s heart. 

“Part of the way my mind works -- that my mirroring works -- is that I’m a slightly different person with every person that I’m with. I’ve never liked a version of myself more than the version that I am when I’m with you.”

Hannibal’s hand strokes carefully over Will’s hair. 

“Do you love me, Hannibal?” Will murmurs against the delicate skin of Hannibal’s jugular. 

“More than anything I have ever known.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is… extremely late. I had the majority of this chapter written when I posted chapter three, and then the quarantine depression set in and I had a hard time finishing anything all summer. 
> 
> I first started writing this fic in December of 2018 (which means it’s been almost two years in the making), and this fic has seen re-writes and direction changes like nothing I’ve ever written before. I have thousands of words from abandoned plot directions and scene revisions left on the cutting room floor. Needless to say, this fic is near and dear to my heart. 
> 
> Part of what stymied me in finishing this chapter (and the fic as a whole) is that I have ideas to loop so many other elements in -- Miriam Lass making her reappearance, them eloping in Italy, etc. -- that would have made this last chapter probably 40k+ words, and the amount that I wanted to add was, quite frankly, intimidating. So, for the sake of my sanity, I decided to end it here! Without making any promises, I might write a sequel or an epilogue one day (albeit a shorter one than this monstrosity) where I could finally get the rest of my ideas out. 
> 
> To all of the people who have stuck by this fic, even with my extreme tardiness (I planned on getting this chapter posted on 5/1!), I appreciate you. I’m not always the best at answering comments, but you guys are seriously the best! Occasional comments in the intervening months kept me going even when I was pointedly ignoring this word document.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to @brawlite for beta-ing for me, with a shout out to @werewolffeelings for listening to me whine about this fic for approximately 187 years. This would never have even gotten close to done without you guys!
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](https://littlesystems.tumblr.com/post/615024074168680448/falls-the-shadow-youre-a-psychiatrist-will), or [twitter](https://twitter.com/little_systems)!


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